When I started designing jewelry a decade ago, I looked around me and got my inspiration from nature. Organic shapes reminiscent of water have always been intriguing for me. I love how water collec...
When talking about our history in the opal business, talk invariably goes to another family with an even longer opal association. E. Gregory Sherman was started by Ernie Sherman in 1896 when he fir...
Keep your opals away from water / Store your opals in water Never use an ultrasonic / Opals are fine to be cleaned in ultrasonicsAll these messages are confusing, aren’t they? It seems for every me...
Harold Hodge' Opal Teeth. Source: Australian Opal CentreThere are some amazing stories out there and it seems the opal world has more than it’s fair share. The most jaw dropping (pardon the pun) i...
Orientation of opal in jewelry when designing any piece of jewelry with opal pays to make sure you choose the right piece of opal for the job. Orientation refers to how the pattern shows up in the ...
Opal mines are amazing and dangerous places. Most people imagine mines to be like a coal mine, a diamond mine, or a gold mine, but actually, an opal mine is relatively small. Here in Lightning Ridg...
Lightning Ridge has many different opal fields or mines in and around it. The opal from each mine and area can differ from black opal to white opal and even grey opal. The opal mines in Lightning R...
You can feel the ‘buzz in the air’! Justin has just received news from his mining crew at Lightning Ridge that they have struck opal. Justin is on his way in his 4WD to see what his mining crew ha...
Opal fossils are opals formed in the cavity left underground by an animal that has perished and left the shape of its former self to be filled by silica spheres over many years. The rain that falls...