The Coral Trade

The home of the coral industry is Italy, where there are about sixty work shops, with about six thousand employees. Torre del Greco is the centre of both the coral-fishing and the coral-working industries. The coral-workers pierce and string pieces of coral of all shapes and sizes. The beads are spherical or egg-shaped—the latter are called "olives." The handicraft of the Italian coral-workers includes carving of a high artistic order—the forms representing many natural objects—and the cutting of beautiful cameos. The coral-gatherers employ fine distinction in denominating coral tints. Pure white is bianco, fresh pale flesh-red is pelle de angelo; pale rose, rosa pallido; bright rose, rosa vivo; these choicest tints are followed by "second colour," secondo coloro; red, rosso; dark red, rosso scuro; and, darkest of all reds carbonetto or ariscuro.

The specific gravity of precious coral is 2.6 to 2.7; hardness in Mohs's scale about 3-4. Coral is soft enough to be easily worked with a file, edged tools, and on a lathe; it is too soft to take a high polish, but despite that dissimilarity from the precious stones of whose company it is a popular member, its fine colour sustains its claim to beauty, and it highly deserves inclusion in a book of gems.

But little coral, comparatively, is mounted in Italy, the setting being done in the fashion in demand in the country where it appears in the jewelry trade.

In the Orient coral is always in demand, with India in the lead followed by China and then Persia. The Chinese mandarins sometimes pay incredible sums for exceptionally fine coral buttons for their caps.

Pieces of coral are used for rich and costly handles of parasols and umbrellas; the coral handle of an umbrella belonging to the Queen of Italy being valued at nearly two thousand dollars. A coral necklace exhibited in 1880 at the International Fisheries Exhibition held at Berlin, was valued at nearly twenty-nine thousand dollars. In Italy the superstition that the wearing of coral is a protection against the evil eye, accounts for its appearance as the commonest personal ornament among the masses; similarly, it is in evidence among the lower class of Italians in the United States. Coral is easily imitated, however, and most of the defences thus relied upon by superstitious wearers are spurious, but equal to the genuine in efficacy. Red gypsum is a common sophistication for precious coral, and simple tests are: scratching it with the finger nail and the application of acid, under which it does not, like genuine coral, effervesce. Celluloid is now sometimes used as a substitute for coral.

The existence of coral within the United States, on the shores of Little Traverse Bay, at Petoskey, Michigan, should not escape mention in an American book. The coral found here is fossil, and many specimens possess rare structural beauty; they are compact and susceptible to a high polish. The fragments found are water-worn, and the weight of some masses secured attained to three pounds. The colour is grey, of various shades. Local lapidaries cut and polish these handsome fossil relics of a prehistoric submarine period, and shape them into seals, charms, cuff buttons, and paper weights. In the mineralogical section of the reports on the Eleventh Census, 1900, Mr. George Frederick Kunz records that from $4000 to $5000 worth annually were sold.