Date of Award
8-26-2010
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Heritage Studies, Ph.D.
First Advisor
Clyde Milner
Committee Members
Joseph Key; Ruth Hawkins
Call Number
LD 251 .A566d 2010 S48
Abstract
This dissertation explores the culture and commerce surrounding Arkansas's freshwater mussel. Slightly more than a century ago it generated excitement for its pearls. The next fifty years or so transformed tons of shell into millions of button blanks bound for northern and eastern finishing plants. During the last half of the twentieth century, beads made from the shell inoculated oysters for the cultured pearl industry. Regionally, the mollusk's usage extends back to early Native Americans who made tools from the shell and used the pearls for adornment or burial practices. Medieval and Renaissance Europeans desired pearls as a display of wealth and power. Freshwater pearls, once common throughout European streams, were harvested to depletion in order to feed the insatiable demand for the gems. When the Spanish and English embarked on global explorations, pearls were one of the treasures they sought. Revolution eventually upended the royal way of life and extravagant displays of wealth became unfashionable, if not outright dangerous. As the eastern half of the present day United States was settled, knowledge of the pearls and use of the shell faded from community memory. Rediscovered in the mid-to-late 1800s, a pearl rush rolled across the eastern United States leaving mounds of empty shells in its wake. The button industry utilized this raw material, and small factories dotted northeast Arkansas river towns in the first half of the twentieth century. Harvesting the shell with modified farming tools, and later ingeniously engineered diving equipment, provided extra income for local families. Even after plastic replaced mother-of-pearl and local button blank manufacturing faded away, divers continued to harvest mussel shells for the Japanese cultured pearl industry. For the latter half of the century the mussel still served as a raw material until the recent advancement of Chinese non-nucleated freshwater pearls eliminated the need for shell nuclei. This research, and the accompanying documentary video, traces the history of shell and pearl, documents the search for old button blank factories, and reintroduces the story that had largely disappeared from community memory.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Shoults, Lenore, "Mother-of-Pearls: The Entwined History of Shell and Pearl in Arkansas" (2010). Student Theses and Dissertations. 993.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/993
