OPAL FACTS
Discover the Beauty and Brilliance of Australian Opals
Opal is one of the 6 most precious and valuable gemstones found in the world sharing it’s prestigious beauty with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls.
Opal is the only gemstone which can display all the colours of the rainbow ranging from violet, indigo, green, yellow, orange and red.
Joseph Taranto- CEO of The Opal Miner
Opal is truly a gemstone of exceptional beauty and value, sharing its prestigious status with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls. Its unique play of colors and iridescence makes it a highly sought-after gemstone among collectors and jewelry enthusiasts.
Opals come in a wide range of colors, from vibrant pinks and blues to fiery oranges and greens, making each stone truly one-of-a-kind. Its rarity and scarcity also contribute to its value, as opals are predominantly found in limited locations around the world. Whether set in a ring, necklace, or earrings, opals add a touch of elegance and sophistication to any piece of jewelry, making them a true treasure to behold.
The History
The history of Australian opals started at around the late 1840's at a cattle station just 80 km outside Adelaide, called Tarrawilla near Angaston.Australian opal did not appear on the world market until the 1890s.
Characteristics
One of the most striking characteristics of opal is it’s “play of colour” in which the grains in the pattern of the opal display a spectral hue which can include one or more or all of the above colours that strikingly change hue as the stone is viewed or tilted on different angles.
COLOUR
The magnificent change in colour the opal displays is caused by light waves diffracting off the tiny spheres packed within the microstructure of the gem. The smaller spheres will diffract the colour blue, moving up the spectral hue to the largest sphere diffracting red the rarest colour found in precious opal.
