Oh I am so excited about today’s post!! Yesterday in the Richard Ogden shop I suddenly got my hands on this black opal and diamond ring, and so I thought that we could look closer at this extraordinary stone. It is the one in the photo below to the left, and you can see how it is so beautifully surrounded by diamonds. The ring to the right features a white opal, also surrounded by diamonds.
Black Opal and Diamond Ring
The world’s first black opal was found in an area of South Wales in Australia called Lightning Ridge in 1877 – we have already learnt about the history of opals in the previous blog post The enchanting landscape of the Opal. Well, the world was overjoyed about this amazing find, as they had never seen anything like it! In fact, opals had had a very bad reputation 50 odd years earlier, when Sir Walter Scott novel “Ann of Geierstein” associated the heroine’s unfortunate downfall with an opal. Suddenly everyone believed that opals would bring bad luck, and so the opal trade suffered immensely for a long time – for no legitimate reason whatsoever! This black opal was then fortunately brought to the attention of the world, and opals immediately sprung back into popularity – and Lightning Ridge remains the finest producer of black opals until this very day.
As you can see in the photo above, the body of the stone in a black opal is what gives the stone its name. This darkness is caused by small trace elements of carbon and iron oxide, which you will not find in other opals (1). The dark colour ranges from dark grey to pitch black, and the characteristic rainbow of colours that we have seen in “regular” opals will still be present in the stone. Black opals are the most valuable ones because of the way the colour spectrum stands out so beautifully against this dark background.
You can also see above that the white opal to the right is cut with a cabochon (the shape of a dome) whereas the black opal has quite a flat top. The reason for this is that the opal colour bar in the black stone is thinner than in the white one, and so it has to be cut thinner to retain its colour.
A white opal surrounded by diamonds
And do remember to wear your opal jewellery, as we have learnt that this lovely stone revels in the humidity of the skin and may break if left unworn for too long!
One of the rings in the first photo comes from the Richard Ogden-collection and the other one from Moira Jewels – and you can viewed them both at our favourite Richard Ogden shop in the Burlington Arcade
Sources:
(1) Opals Down Under
Decades of Elegance 