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With Volle Jewellery, the best opals in the world are at your fingertips. Formed from silica-rich waters and rock crevices over a million years old, opals are famed for their intricate patterns and unique colour play. Volle’s opal collection includes exquisite pieces sourced from prestigious Australian sites. In fact, Australia is known around the world for its rich opal mining history, producing exquisite opals in locations like Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge.
What Makes Opals Unique?
Opals are one of the most desirable stones for both jewellers and collectors. Offering timeless elegance and sophistication, opals are the perfect stone with which to craft stunning pieces of jewellery. The best opals produce a truly captivating play of colour, refracting a diverse range of shades as light passes over the stone.
Australian-sourced opals are ideal for creating a wide range of exquisite jewellery pieces. Volle’s collection is home to stunning opal pendants, rings, bracelets and earrings that represent the perfect finishing touch to almost any outfit. Volle also offers a range of loose opals, carvings and specimens that can be proudly displayed in your collection.
Black Opals
As the most sought-after opal in the world, black opals symbolise prosperity and elegance. Their dark body tone enhances the vivid play of colour these opals naturally possess, providing a high level of contrast when light hits the surface.
Lightning Ridge, an outback mining town in north-western New South Wales, is famed for producing some of the best opals in the world. Its fields are also the only home of black opals anywhere in the world.
White Opals
Featuring a pure white body tone, white opals have a softer appearance than the vivid black opal. The finest white opals still possess a captivating play of colour, displaying a range of pastel shades against the soft white background.
While they are still a rare gemstone, white opals are found in numerous locations across Australia. Coober Pedy in South Australia is particularly well known for producing high quality white Australian opals.
Boulder Opals
Containing opal veins within an ironstone matrix, boulder opals feature intricate patterns and give off a natural appearance. When paired with the right setting, the boulder opal makes for a highly unique piece of jewellery guaranteed to accentuate any outfit it is worn with.
Australian boulder opals are sourced from a variety of fields, most notably throughout Queensland. Sites such as Winton and Quilpie are known to produce boulder opals of exquisite quality.
Crystal Opals
Crystal opals are known for their clear to translucent body tone, which allows a degree of light to pass through the stone. Their transparency highlights the play of colour in the opal, leading to a stunning visual effect when exposed to light.
Australian crystal opals are most commonly sourced from South Australia; in particular from the Andamooka mine in South Australia.
Famous Opals
While countries such as Ethiopia, Mexico and the USA mine opals, Australia is the leading producer of the gemstone worldwide. More than 95 percent of the world’s opals are found and mined in Australia. Australian opals are sourced from sites located across three states: New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia.
Over the years, a number of unique Australian opals have earned legendary fame, for their appearance, size and weight.
The Flame Queen
The Flame Queen is a black opal that was discovered in 1914 by three miners at the Bald Hill Workings in Lightning Ridge. It featured a central red dome, surrounded by a blue-green band, hence the name. Weighing around 263 carats, The Flame Queen features an unusually flat profile, which adds to its play of colour.
The Virgin Rainbow
A more recent Australian opal discovery was The Virgin Rainbow, which originated from Coober Pedy in South Australia. It measures approximately 7 cm in length and is famed for its exquisite clarity and intense play of colour. The opal formed within a fossilised skeleton, adding to its value and intrigue among historians.
The Olympic Australis
The Olympic Australis carries the coveted title of being the largest and most valuable opal ever found. It weighs around 3.5 kg, measures 280 mm in length, and was valued at $2.5 million in 1997. The Olympic Australis was discovered at the Eight Mile opal field in Coober Pedy in 1956, the same year Australia hosted its first Olympic Games in Melbourne. The opal was named to commemorate the event.
What to Look For in a High Quality Opal
The best opals in the world all share a number of common attributes beyond just a high price tag. While a purer opal contains more of the gemstone, it is not necessarily an indicator of quality. Instead, when inspecting an opal for quality, look for the following:
- A sharp body tone: A consistent base of the opal enhances the depth of the gemstone, and provides a more visible play of colour.
- Distinctive play of colour: Opals are famed for their play of colour, making it one of the most important indicators of quality in any example of the gemstone.
- Clarity: A well defined opal free of imperfections and impurities is another key indicator of high quality. An opal displaying a clean, clear surface will be held in higher regard by jewellers and collectors.
Some opal sites are renowned for producing high quality opals. Lightning Ridge, for example, has a reputation for containing some of Australia’s best opals, as does Coober Pedy.
Speak to Your Friendly Jeweller
Australia is famed for producing some of the best opals in the world. In addition to being the singular home of the black opal, Australia is known for unearthing some of the rarest, most valuable examples of the gemstone worldwide. Australian opal fields are also known for producing high quality boulder, crystal and white opals for use in jewellery, specimens and carvings.
Volle offers a diverse collection of opal jewellery, loose opals, specimens and carvings. Each piece in our collection has been carefully crafted to pair the best opals Australia has to offer with exquisite settings that accentuate the natural beauty of the gemstone.
Visit our flagship Sydney jewellery store to see some of the best opals in the world for yourself.
