Proclaimed Australia's most famous gemstone, opal has long been admired throughout the ages, from the ancient Romans to the Aztecs to the Arabs.
Having established itself as a global leader since its discovery over 2,000 years ago, opal is the only gemstone whose color is determined by refracted and reflected light, revealing all the colors of the spectrum, similar to the rainbow on a soap bubble, which change with the slightest movement, ensuring that no two are alike.
The Indigenous Australian peoples of the Euraliah region, which extends from Lightning Ridge to the Narran Lakes in north-western New South Wales, have their own story of the creation of the first opal.
The creator of Dreamtime (or "Dreamtime" in Aboriginal mythology) descended to earth in a gigantic rainbow. He gathered all the tribes and said he would return when they were wise enough to fulfill his purpose: to extend peace on earth forever.
On the stony ridges where the rainbow had settled, there was a vast area of rocks and pebbles. The next morning, when the sun rose and illuminated that spot, the rocks and pebbles sparkled and glowed with all the colors of the rainbow that had created them: red, orange, blue, green, yellow, and purple. These were the first opals ("The Opal Story" by A. and D. Cody 2008).
The name “opal” derives from the Latin “opalus”, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit “upala” meaning precious stone, a name introduced to Europe from India.
The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD, author of the first 37-volume encyclopedia Naturalis Historia, wrote: "plurimum ab iis differunt opali, smaragdisfatto cedentes. India sola et horum mater est. qui ut pretiosissimarum Gloria composite gemmarum maxime inenarrabilem difficultatem adferunt. est in his carbunculi tenuior ignis, est amethysti fulgens purpura, est smaragdi virens mare, cuncta pariter incredible mixtura lucentia.”
Translation: "Opals are far preferred to beryls, yet they are only equal to emeralds. India alone is their mother. These, compounded with the glory of the most precious gems, add an indescribable complexity. There is in them a fire finer than the garnet, there is the brilliant purple of the amethyst, there is the sea green of the emerald, all equally resplendent in an incredible fusion."
The Romans held this precious stone in high regard, and there's a famous anecdote about Nonius, a senator during the reign of Mark Antony. Nonius owned a ring with an opal the size of a hazelnut of inestimable value, so precious that he preferred to be proscribed and flee with it rather than give it up.
Opal mining in Dubnik reached its golden age during the 19th century, although it is unclear when this began. One thing is certain, however, that it was made world-famous by early traders not as European or Slovak opal, but rather as Indian opal. Indeed, such a splendid gem was believed to originate only from the Far East, not Eastern Europe. Later, some sought to emphasize the gem's origin. It was Daniel Gabriel Lichard (1812–1882), a clergyman, evangelist, and publicist, who named the precious Dubnik opal the 'Slovak noble opal' ('Slovensky sl'achetny opál'). During the same period, earth scientists in Budapest, however, attempted to promote it as Hungarian opal. Following World War I, with the abolition of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Dubnik mines became the property of the newly formed Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, four years after this event, mining operations were suspended. It is believed that the discovery of new, relatively more accessible opal deposits in Australia rendered the now depleted Dubnik mines unprofitable. (Excerpt from "The Story of European Precious Opal from Dubník" by Peter Semrád)
In Australia, it was around 1840 that Professor Johann Menge, a German minerologist, first discovered low-quality opal in the Angaston area, about 80 km northeast of Adelaide. In the early 1900s, it was Tullie Cornthwaite Wollaston who spread opal from Australia to the rest of the world. He is considered the father of the opal industry, collecting it from early miners during his perilous journeys to the most desolate areas of the country.
It was at the beginning of the 16th century that the Spanish conquistadors brought the first samples of transparent, orange-red opal, known as fire opal, to Europe. These had long been known to pre-Columbian civilizations, who sought them for ornamental objects and ritual purposes. The exact location of this opal, however, was only discovered in 1804 by Baron Alexander von Humboldt during his expedition to the Mexican highlands. To meet the demands of European customers, a veritable opal mining industry emerged in central Mexico in 1885. This was later joined in 1892 by the discovery of similar stones from the Blue Mountains in the state of Oregon (USA), now Opal Butte, and in 1910 from the Shaphané Mountains in Turkey.
In 1912, the Lydia Trading House in Mainz, Germany, began extracting reddish-yellow and ochre opal with little play of color from Turkish mines. These gems sold for considerable sums.
More recently, in the 1970s, fire opal was discovered in Brazil and in the 1990s in Ethiopia.
It is only recently, in fact, that the Horn of Africa has become a producer of precious opal suitable for jewellery, with Somalia and Ethiopia, in the provinces of Welo and Shewa (Mezezo).
Opal and jewelry
Opal established itself as a sought-after gem by jewelers at the beginning of the 20th century, although, thanks to Queen Victoria, it had already come into vogue when it was used in a parure worn during her coronation in 1837 and in a tiara worn during state ceremonies.
It was during the Belle Époque that opal took on a special significance in jewelry. It was during this period that intellectuals and artists of the Decadent movement, rejecting everything formal and traditional, seeking new stimuli, especially in the applied arts such as goldsmithing, chose opal, a rarely used material, as the gemstone representative of a creative era driven by the pursuit of new forms, lights, and colors.
The first fifteen years of the 20th century were the golden age of opal, not only in high-end creations by Tiffany, Vever, Falize, Lalique, Fouquet, Mucha, and Cartier, but also in the creations of small commercial jewelry. As styles changed, opal took a back seat to gems that characterized creations that favored sharp contrasts and medium-to-large thicknesses, rare characteristics in opal. Today, it is highly prized in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and France, but it is especially in Japan and China that it finds its greatest admirers.
A 'royal' gem
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, in the mid-1500s, we know from an old English description that opal was highly prized. King Louis XVII owned a magnificent opal, now preserved in the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) loved opals, then sourced from Slovakia and Australia, so much so that she often chose them as wedding gifts.
Tsar Nicholas I of Russia gave his daughter, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolajewna, Queen of Württemberg, a gold buckle set with diamonds, emeralds, turquoises, sapphires, garnets, and opals. It is said that Empress Josephine, Napoleon's wife, owned the most famous example of a precious opal, called the Fire of Troy (because of its fiery red shimmer).
