CO LO R E D G E M S TO N E
SEPTEMBER
DIAMONDS.NET
With their colorful flecks of light,
these luminous gems are inspiring
breathtaking creations and poetic
descriptions from jewelers
.
BY FRANCESCA FEARON
1
2
ODE TO OPALS
1
Piaget Wings of Light watch
with Australian black opal,
sapphires and diamonds.
2
Chaumet Perspectives ring
with black opal, sapphires,
diamonds and tsavorites.
3
Boghossian necklace with
opals and diamonds from the
Kissing collection.
Margot McKinney, they “look like they
have been plucked out of the sea or from
an exotic reef, with their enigmatic play of
blue [and] green to orange and pink.”
VALUABLE HISTORY
The first to mention opal was Pliny
the Elder in the first century, and the
earliest confirmed find was in what is
now Slovakia. However, it was an
discovery in Australia that triggered the
opal boom in the jewelry trade. The first
Queensland opals arrived in London’s
Hatton Garden jewelry district in the
s, and the gemstone found its way
into the Arts &Crafts movement.
Britain’s Queen
Victoria was an
early opal fan,
influencing tastes
around the empire.
In the US, Louis
Comfort Tiffany
used opal with
enamel, garnet
and tourmalines
in signature motifs like dragonflies. Light
opal’s milky iridescence famously inspired
the naturalistic Art Nouveau designs of
René Lalique and Georges Fouquet, and
later appeared in the works of designer
Sybil Dunlop in the
s and ’ s.
Today, these stones are back on
trend — especially the black, boulder
and Ethiopian varieties — thanks to a
big increase inmillennial customers,
according to online marketplace Opal
Auctions. This has sparked a search for
wholesale opals in the ,
to ,
price range.
I
f there is one gem that brings out the
colorist in a jeweler, it’s the opal. Each
individual stone fires off a different
pattern of rainbow-hued optical
illusions that have designers enraptured.
Color-obsessed Victoire de Castellane,
creative director of Christian Dior’s
jewelry division, selected a variety of vivid
gemstones to highlight the hues flashing
in the opals of her Dior et Toi collection.
Opal, to her, is a poetic stone — “an
invitation to enter a fairytale,” she says,
naming black opals as her favorite for their
“vibrant play of colors.”
High jeweler Albert Boghossian is
similarly rhapsodic. “It is like looking at
a canvas of colorful brushstrokes,” he
muses. And to Australia-based designer
“ [ THEY ] LOOK
L I KE THEY HAVE
BEEN PLUCKED
OUT OF THE SEA
OR FROM AN
EXOT I C REEF ”
