The red of ruby. The blue of sapphire. The green of emerald. All these colors flash like fireworks in opal. The Bedouins say that opals capture their colors from lightning. Chatham lab-grown opals show all the colors of the rainbow in lovely patterns.

Opal forms slowly through sedimentation, which makes it the most difficult gem that we grow at Chatham. The process is a form of colloidal chemistry rather than the high heat and pressure we use to grow other gem varieties. It takes two years for opal to form in the lab, the longest growth period of any gem.

A beautiful opal is always one of a kind, like a work of art with its unique pattern of flashing and shifting colors inside. Its name comes from the ancient Greek opallios, which means “color change.”

Many cultures have given opal supernatural powers. Bedouin legends say it falls from the heavens in flashes of lightning. The ancient Greeks believed opals gave their owners the gift of prophecy. In 1829, the popular novel Anne of Geierstein by Sir Walter Scott featured a cursed opal. For almost a century, some people believed it was unlucky for anyone not born in October to wear opal.