THE GEMSTONE LIBRARY
Abalone Shell
Abalone shell brings the changing colors of the sea into jewelry and decorative objects. Its luminous inner surface is nacre, also called mother-of-pearl.
What is abalone?
Abalone are marine gastropods of the genus Haliotis. They have a single ear-shaped shell and inhabit coastal rocky environments. Shell is a material made by a living animal, rather than a crystal grown in a geological deposit.
Why the colors change
Abalone nacre contains closely packed layers of aragonite platelets. Light interacting with this layered structure produces interference and diffraction, creating iridescent colors that change with viewing angle. In nacre, this optical effect is called orient. The appearance comes from the shell’s fine structure, rather than simply from a colored pigment.
Shell in jewelry
Its vivid mother-of-pearl surface makes abalone popular for decorative shell pieces and jewelry. Shell, a pearl, and an assembled blister-pearl product are different forms of material, even when all originate from abalone. The photographs show our abalone shells and jewelry. They do not establish an exact species or collecting locality.