Opal Jewelry - Necklace

 The opal is a fascinating gemstone to look at. While other stones and diamonds are also interesting in an aesthetic sense, they don't match up. The stone's play of colors changes with the angle you look at it, making it a gem that you can look at for hours! These flashes of colors are called opalescence and may be numerous or few and differing in size and type. It is these colorings that determine how much an opal is worth. The opal is a gem mainly found in Australia. Almost 95% of the stones on the market are mined there, though Mexico, Brazil and a few American states also export the colored gemstone. There have also been recent finding in the African nations of Ethiopia and Mali, but the opal is an Australian stone first and foremost. Opals are classified into two major groups: precious opals and common opals. Those that display the characteristic play of color are known as precious opals, while those lacking this - single color specimens - are known as common opals. Gems u...

 It is no wonder that consumers do not know a lot about opals because they come from different regions in Australia and each region has a vastly different kind of opal. How are opal jewelry formed? In different ways and that makes them a little more confusing. The most widely known opal has always been the white opal. Have a look at antique opal jewelry pieces and you are likely to find a reasonably colorless white stone. Most of this stone came and still comes from South Australia. It is also called light opal and it has a light or white colored background and through that background shines the opal play of color. This type of opal was formed in the center of Australia which was once an inland sea. Silica seeped into through layers of sandstone where it hardened and became opal. Sometimes it seeped into cavities left by decayed and no longer existing sea shells and vegetation and the opal took on these shapes. Then there is black opal and everyone who was used to seeing their gra...

Opal Jewelry comes in a great variety of types and styles. What we mean by 'types' is that there are at least three kinds of opal gemstone found in the outback of Australia in three basic areas. South Australia, NSW, and Queensland. But this is not a geography lesson. The focus is on that illusive and rare gem termed 'opal' which, according to historians has the meaning of 'a change of color' From what we can work out, the first type of opal found in this large continent was boulder opal and that was in the state of Queensland in the north eastern part of the country. So that this article doesn't ramble too much we will try to focus on this particular unique opal as it applies to necklaces, and leave a discussion of white opal, crystal opal and black opal for another time. As the name suggests, Boulder Opal is often found in very large and also quite small boulder ironstones depending on the field. As the opal miner removes these stones from the ground, he c...