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17/04/2010
CORALS
The greatest part of the Coral used in jewelry is drawn by the calcareous skeletons or better from the scaffolding branched that dwarfish sea organisms, produce during their life in community. The ideal environment is constituted by seas with inclusive temperatures between the 18 and the 20 degrees, with depth that goes from 10 to 100 meters. Essential condition are the absence of polluting substances, not elevated salinity and an appreciable brightness.
This explains the importance of the Mediterranean sea, particularly of the Sardinian waters, Sicilians and north Africans, not only for quantity, but above all for the quality of the Corals discoveries.
The most known, the most famous and certainly the more used in the antiquity is that denominated " Coral Mediterranean", scientifically identified as "Corallium Rubrum" whose area of harvest interests the coasts of Greece, Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Yugoslavia, Morocco, in practice the whole Mediterranean basin.
A very rare variety and appreciated that it belongs to the kind "corallium rubrum" it is the Coral of Sciacca, found in Sicily. The layers were open in 1875, and it are the only coral sub - fossil of merit, used in jewelry. Of color typical orange, is today to consider a real rarity.
The Coral Satsuma, coming from the seas of Philippines and Japan, it is that more used in jewelry in the last decades, in how much they pick up great quantity in comparison to that Mediterranean. Of red color up to white, introduces him of an a little homogeneous color.
The CoralloBokè or Skin of angel, of Japanese origin, it is the very famous variety from the delicate and sweet tone rosy uniform.
There exist also other varieties: the Misu of pale white / pink color; the Moro of intense dark red color, by now almost extinct, of Japanese origin; the Deep Sea of pale red color, not homogeneous it originates from the sea of the Hawaii
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According to Ovidio the red coral was born from the blood of one of the Gorgonis, Jellyfish, when Perseo beheaded her/it. The Gorgonis had the ability to petrify with the look and the blood of Jellyfish, to the contact with the foam created by the waves, it petrified some algae that with the blood they became redheads.
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