The Insight

In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare referred to Opal as "the queen of gems’.

" The Roman historian Pliny described it as having "the fire of the carbuncle, the brilliant purple of the amethyst and the sea green color of the emerald, all shining together in incredible union ' "

The Romans considered opal a symbol of hope, an appropriate attribute for a gem with a rainbow locked within it. The Arabs believed opals fell from heaven in flashes of lightning, thus acquiring their fiery colors.

These romantic notions are inspired by one of the most uniquely beautiful gemstones nature has ever produced-the dramatic, mysterious opal. The phenomenon displayed by opal is called play of color. It is caused by the diffraction of light set up by the layers of silica spheres in its composition. The effect is similar to the rainbow colors displayed on a soap bubble, only much more dramatic.

In the 19th century opal acquired a stigma through its role in the plot of a novel by Sir Walter Scott, Anne of Geierstein. The heroine owned an opal that burned fiery red when she was angry and turned ashen grey upon her death. Queen Victoria finally dispelled the curse by giving opal jewelry wedding presents to her relatives.

Opal has long been regarded as an October birthstone, sharing the spotlight with Tourmaline. The famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt was born in October and never considered herself well-dressed unless she was wearing opals.

Varieties

The most treasured variety of opal is black opal with strong play of color, that is, brilliant flashes of different colors. Black opal is so called because of its dark background color.

The variety known as white opal has a light background, and the colors displayed lean toward the pastel hues.

Crystal opal has a colorless background and exhibits play of color, but, unlike white or black opal, it lets light pass through it.

Fire opal is also fairly transparent, but its background color may be yellow, orange, red or brown. Sometimes it doesn't even have the typical play of color. It's often called Mexican opal because Mexico is a major source of this type. Fire opal with a red body color is also known as cherry opal.

Opal that is colorless, transparent to semitransparent and has little or no play of color is called jelly or water opal.

Opal quality is judged by the number of colors exhibited and the evenness of the pattern. 

Australia’s Gift

Australia is the world's most important source of opal. The opal miner is a strange breed of individual. He chooses to lead a Spartan life in a particularly barren and dry corner of the world while he searches for his rainbows. To escape the extreme temperatures, he must burrow a home underground.

Opals are usually found in Sandstone or Claystone. Deposits are spread over a wide area, and there is little clue to their location. Mining is done on a small scale with hand-operated machinery and small tools. A pocket knife might be the final instrument to loosen an opal from its host rock.

Imitating Nature

Over the past century scientists have become highly skilled at creating laboratory facsimiles of fine gemstones. Far from being mere look-alikes, these synthetic gems are made of exactly the same material that nature uses and mimic the natural structure perfectly.

Synthetic opal first came on the market in 1974 and has been improving ever since. A skilled gemologist can distinguish it from natural opal by viewing it under magnification, but to the untrained eye it looks natural.

Versatile!!!

Because opal displays a whole rainbow of colors, it can be worn with any color outfit. It is usually cut in a dome shape and set in rings, earrings, pendants, bracelets and pins. It may be joined by accents of ruby, sapphire or emerald to enhance particular color flashes in the gemstone. A fine opal piece is often guarded in a web of small diamonds as are other exceptional colored gems. Some opals are fashioned into beads for a major contribution to a woman's total look

Tourmaline's name comes from the Sinhalese word "turmali," which means "mixed." Bright rainbow collections of gemstone varieties were called "turmali" parcels. Tourmaline, occurring in more colors and combinations of colors than any other gemstone variety, lives up to its name. There is a tourmaline that looks like almost any other gemstone! Many stones in the Russian Crown jewels from the 17th Century once thought to be rubies are actually tourmalines.

Perhaps this is why this gemstone is said to encourage artistic intuition: it has many faces and expresses every mood.

The Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi, the last Empress of China, loved pink tourmaline and bought almost a ton of it from the new Himalaya Mine, located a long way from the Middle Country in California. The Himalaya Mine is still producing tourmaline today but the Dowager went to rest eternally on a carved tourmaline pillow.

Tourmaline is also of interest to scientists because it changes its electrical charge when heated. It becomes a polarized crystalline magnet and can attract light objects. This property was noticed long ago before science could explain it: in the Netherlands, tourmalines were called "aschentrekkers" because they attracted ashes and could be used to clean pipes!

Tourmaline occurs in every color of the rainbow and combinations of two or three colors. Bicolor and tricolor tourmalines, with bands of colors are very popular. Sometimes the colors are at different ends of the crystal and sometimes there is one color in the heart of the crystal and another around the outside. One color combination, pink center with a green rind, is called "watermelon tourmaline" (seedless, of course!) Sometimes designers set slices of the crystal instead of faceted stones to show off this phenomenon.

Almost every color of tourmaline can be found in Brazil, especially in Minas Gerais and Bahia. Pink and green colors are particularly popular. In 1989, miners discovered tourmaline unlike any that had ever been seen before. The new type of tourmaline, which soon became known as Paraiba tourmaline, came in incredibly vivid blues and greens. The demand and excitement for this new material, which soon fetched more than $10,000 per carat, earned more respect for the other colors of tourmaline.

Pink and green tourmalines are now widely available and are especially popular in designer jewelry. Blue tourmalines are also very much in demand but the supply is more limited.

Tourmalines are most often cut in long rectangular shapes because of their long and narrow crystal shape. Tourmaline crystals are beautiful, pencil thin and ridged, and they are also sometimes set in jewelry. Some designers also set rainbows of tourmaline in each color of the spectrum. Tourmaline is strongly pleochroic: the darkest color is always seen looking down the axis of the crystal.

In addition to Brazil, tourmaline is also mined in Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and California and Maine in the United States. Maine produces beautiful sherbet colors of tourmaline and spectacular minty greens. California is known for perfect pinks, as well as beautiful bicolors.

One particularly beautiful variety is chrome tourmaline, a rare type of tourmaline from Tanzania which occurs in a very rich green color caused by chromium, the same element which causes the green in emerald. Tourmaline is a hard and durable gemstone which can withstand years of wear.