Women's Opal Ring

Beautiful Sterling Silver Inlay Design Ring With Gorgeous Opal Stone

Handmade Opal Women's Ring. Approx. 0.4" high X 0.7" wide with 1.41 mm shank size 6.

Opal is a paradoxical gemstone, and one of the most fascinating. It is a form of quartz, but is not a form of quartz. Quartz is very common, yet has many rare and precious gem varieties. Opal itself has numerous varieties. It is the most colourful gemstone, but some forms are colourless. It can be very bright and beautiful, and it can be dull and dead. It is best known for its flashes of colour, but some varieties have no flashes of colour, and are still opals. It can be black, and it can be white. Its best known attribute, the brilliant flashes of many colours, are not called opalescence, but irridescence. Some people think opal is unlucky, but it is one of the most valuable and desirable of gems. Actually because opal is a gel, it is, strictly speaking, not a form of quartz. Quartz is a crystalline form of silicon dioxide, opal is a solid gel. However because the chemical formula is the same except that opal is hydrous, that is it contains some water which is chemically attached to the silicon dioxide molecules. Opals were known and mined in Roman times. The Roman mines were in and around Cervenica, previously in Czechoslovakia, although we have now lost track of all the recent changes in Balkan geography. Now most the opal the market is from Australia or Mexico. Austrailian opal is the finest.

Manufacturer: Dillon Hartman
SKU:	DSR00089