Corals

Corals are a decorative material with a very special fascination - the perfect embodiment of Man's longing for summer, sun and far-off oceans. As to the origin of the name, the etymologists are not, however, of one opinion. Some say that it comes from the Greek 'korallion', which denotes the hard, calcareous skeleton of the coral animals, or from 'kura-halos', for 'mermaid', as the fine branches of the coral sometimes look like small figures. Others think it more likely that the word is derived from the Hebrew 'goral', (a small stone used in the drawing of lots), for coral branches used to be used in oracles in Palestine, Asia Minor and around the Mediterranean. Corals live at depths of between three and 300 metres in the waters around Japan, Taiwan and in the Malaysian Archipelago, in the Red Sea, in the Bay of Biscay and around the Canary Islands, as well as in north-east Australia and the Midway Islands. In the Mediterranean, there are coral banks in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Sardinia, off Tunisia and Algeria, former Yugoslavia and Turkey. When we hear the word coral we first think of the coral reefs in the Southern Ocean or off Australia, of the reefs, banks and atolls which are among the most beautiful miracles of Nature. However, it is not these protected coral species of which we are talking here. In jewellery, it is corals such as 'corallium rubrum' and 'corallium japonicum' that are used.Like the pearls, these are also organic jewellery materials. It certainly is an interesting fact that both of these are products of the water, chemically closely related with each other. Both consist of more than 90 per cent calcium carbonate. And it really is a miraculous thing that Nature has created both the scarlet coral and the pearl from the same, unprepossessing raw material.