OPALS: PARADIGM SHIFT

Virgin Valley, Nevada Opal.  Photo courtesy of Chris Ralph

Today's blog is dedicated to Oregon jeweler extraordinaire, Norm Holliday.  Happy Birthday, Norm!

We grow up thinking things are this way, then we find out they're that way.  Then we realize it may be a little of both.   

I'm still on the subject of opals.  We've had a lot of people in looking at opals for our Opal Event, and my sense is that many are surprised.  Shocked, perhaps.  It  is a complete paradigm shift, from thinking that opals look this way, to understanding that they might look that way too. 

Photo by the author.  These opals are for sale at Harbrook Jewelers.

The photographs are of examples of opal found near where I live.  The rough opal specimen above is from the Virgin Valley of northern Nevada, not too far from the Oregon border.  The faceted opal beads and trillion are from Oregon Butte, in Morrow County, Oregon, and the creamy blue beads are from Owyhee, Oregon.  Opal can look this way, or that way.  

I had a paradigm shift myself this week.  While asking the question, "What is the earliest known use of opal by human beings?" I read that Louis S.B. Leakey discovered opal artifacts in a cave in Nakuru, Kenya, dated to be about 6,000 years old.  But then I read something else about the discovery of opal closer to home that stopped me in my tracks.  I'll bet it will surprise you too.   

There is evidence that Chinese explorers came to North America approximately  4500 years ago on scientific expeditions, and with various mountain peaks as their loci, extensively cataloged their geographical features, the plants and animals, the rivers, and other things of interest that they found surrounding them--including minerals.   Opals.  Like what you see in these pictures.  The explorers reported finding beautiful black opals, which match the description of Virgin Valley opal.

The remnants of these writings, called the Shan Hai King, The Classic of Mountains and Seas, were thought for centuries to be myth, on the order of our Atlantis stories.  No credibility was given to them, because they didn't match any geography known in Asia, and thus they were of no serious academic interest to scholars.  But as it turns out, the detail in which these observations  were made has given compelling evidence that these intrepid geographers were actually describing Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and many other identifiable places in North America.

A paradigm shift.  I won't think of American history the same way again.  Or opals.  And I have a lot more reading to do now!

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING:
The World of Opals, by Allan W. Eckert, PhD.  Publisher: Wiley 1997
Gods From the Far East: How the Chinese Discovered America, by Henrietta Mertz.  Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2008

OPALS: LOVE & TRANSFORMATION (Part Two)

When I first started working in the jewelry industry, the opal jewelry most often sold in America was the Australian white solid opal.  They were generally a milky white, with dots of red, yellow, orange and green play of color.  It was called "pinfire", and often referred to as "Fire Opal" (although this now refers to the Mexican variety--vibrant reds and oranges).    The Australian opals were inevitably oval, and of uniform, calibrated size.  They would often be placed in cluster mountings, the opal central and surrounded by diamonds.   Frankly, they didn't do much for me.  They all kinda looked the same.  

Unusual varieties were available back in those days, it just wasn't on most people's radar.  Unless you were a rockhound,  a world traveler or lived near an opal field, the average person (including a young jewelry store clerk) just didn't know anything about the other types of opals.  But how things have changed!  

OK--I admit it.  Today I'm a confirmed opalholic.  Started down the road to ruin with some Australian crystals with broad rolling flash.  Lost it completely at Lightning Ridge, with a startling bolt of green electricity against a midnight blue sky.  Now I'm smitten with a boulder that has a picture of my heaven on it, with a crayon box of colors.

This is the one I love.  It looks to me like my favorite kind of landscape: the sun shining on a mountaintop, a pristine green meadow in the foreground with little yellow wildflowers, a big rock to climb and sit there with a sandwich and feel the breeze cooling your neck after a long hike.  There's a lazy creek in the middle distance.  There is not one other opal in the universe like this one.  To me, this opal is symbolic of my spiritual journey. It speaks to my soul.

Today, a customer brought up the bad luck story of opal again, the very thing I mentioned in my last post.  "It's supposed to be bad luck unless someone gives it to you," she said.  Then after a pause, she smiled and added, "Well, that's what my mother used to say.  But I don't care about that at all.  I love opals and I'm going to wear them if I want.   They really speak to me."   

I think that is significant.  The transformation within people on a spiritual level is always reflected in their choice of personal adornment.    We're transforming from a consciousness of "it's bad luck" to "I make my own luck".  From "they're too fragile for me to wear" to "I'm ready to care for this beautiful gem, this gift from the earth."  From "I'm afraid to open my heart for fear you will break it" to "I'm open to love you, because I know how to love and take care of myself first."   It is symbolic, I believe, for the love and care we are learning to give to ourselves.

Like just about everything else today, we can point to the internet as a key factor, in the rise in global markets and the barriers to trade broken down, and the sharing of information in an unprecedented way.   But there is something deeper here.  In the very rise of availability and interest in the varied forms of opal, the innate desire to say something different about ourselves, and to ourselves, is revealed.   We're re-inventing who we are, we're integrating all we are into wholeness.

"For in them you shall see the living fire of  the ruby, the glorious purple of the amethyst, the sea-green of the emerald, all glittering together in an incredible mixture of light."  Pliny the Elder, 1st century A.D.

OPALS: PASSIONATE LOVE, BROKEN HEARTS, TRANSFORMATION (Part One)

I'm in love.

This week, I have been showing a lot of opals, talking about opals, falling in love with opals.  The store where I am gainfully employed has been having its annual Opal Lovers Event.  We become, for a week or two in October, the center of the opal universe, at least in southern Oregon.  Australian white opals, Lightning Ridge blacks, Mexican fires, Peruvian blues, yowah nuts from Queensland, dendritic common opal from Turkey--well, you get my drift.  An incredible diversity of beautiful opal that many people didn't even know existed, have never seen.  It creates a lot of excitement.

And yet, there is something I've observed about the opal mystique.  No matter how admired opals are, we still hear customers raise the "cursed opal" theme.  The persistent idea is that opals are bad luck if "they're not your birthstone" or if "they're not a gift from someone who loves you".  Seriously, these beliefs actually hold people back from buying one.  It's not the money, or the lack of desire, or anything like that.  They look wistfully in the case, they have the deep breath intake that people have when they see a beautiful gem that speaks to them, and... they shake their heads and say, "No...no....opals are bad luck.  It's beautiful, but I would never own it."  

An often repeated explanation as to why people believe opals are bad luck points to Sir Walter Scott's novel, Ann of Geierstein.  Oh really?  A novel published in 1829, concerning a heroine who has supernatural gifts in the midst of the Burgundian conflict, and who owns an opal that dulls when sprinkled with holy water?  That story is going to have created such a powerful meme that  nearly 200 years later, people are still shying away from wearing a gemstone as beautiful as opal?   Puhlleeeeze.   

Do you remember your first love?  When you loved with complete abandon, your whole heart and soul?  You just jumped right in, with no regard for consequences, and nothing else mattered but the object of your desire?  Opals, I believe, are symbolic of this kind of natural and vulnerable human passion.

Opals have such an incredible variety that even professional jewelers, over a career of 30 or 40 years, will not have seen every type, or every configuration of fire or pattern within the types.  There are truly no two opals alike.  Most people won't give it this kind of introspection, but symbolic knowledge runs deep within us.  Every opal is unique; our experiences of love are unique.   Even if we've loved and been loved many times, we know that each love is different.  This week, I heard people say several times: "Wow, I've never seen an opal like that before!"..and they desire it.   Lovers say, "I've never loved like this before." 

Did you know that you can boil diamonds in hot acid?  Did you know that with a diamond, a jeweler can subject them to steam, put them under a torch hot enough to liquify metals, run a steel file right on its surface and not make the slightest mark?   Did you know that the wearer of a diamond can garden in it, play basketball, wash the dog and likely do that every day for 50 years without a scratch?   But could you do that with opal?  No.  NO!  It's fragile, it's soft, it doesn't like extremes of temperature, it doesn't like knocks, it doesn't like dryness, and it sure doesn't like thoughtless abuse of any kind.

If diamond is our symbol for indestructible and enduring love, then opal has to be our symbol for all that is ephemeral in love, for love that might be broken through our own carelessness, or fate, or death.    Love an opal, and part of the experience might be mourning its loss.  

It's a devastating feeling to look down at a piece of jewelry that is meaningful to you, and see that your stone (any stone) is gone, broken, damaged.   That pain is very personal.   "It's my fault.  I don't deserve something this nice."  "Stupid stone.  I should never have loved it.  They always break."  Love, and your heart could be broken.  These are the real unspoken reasons, I think, that people still carry around the "curse of opal."

But let's not leave it here quite yet..not with loss.  I'm not done with the subject of opal. Transformation ahead!

GALATEA PEARLS - A follow-up

"When an oyster swallows a grain of sand it feels the discomfort, so it begins to ease the pain by applying a coat of nacre (pearl). It is during this healing process that it creates a beautiful pearl. This is like life itself. It is easy to love in good times, but it takes courage to love through the discomfort of our lives. The gemstone represents the grain of sand, the beauty inside evoking an aura of love, courage and healing. It is this unique transformation that has given birth to the 'Galatea Pearl' the symbol of love."

A friend asked me for more information about the terrific Galatea pearls featured in the photograph in my blog on October 10.                   Chi Galatea Huynh is my kind of guy.  His stated mission is to bring more beauty to the world, a declaration he made after experiencing much darkness as a child in war-torn Vietnam.   This is a story about perseverance, dedication to one's vision, and finding inspiration in one's failures.  It is no surprise to me that pearls are one of his canvases.                      Chi has been lauded as creating the most innovative pearl jewelry since Mikimoto, so innovative in fact that he holds a patent on the process.   The inspiration for his gemstone nucleated pearls was the direct result of a mistake.  At the time, he was incising designs into the surface nacre of large cultured pearls, and accidentally cut too deeply into one, thus ruining the pearl by exposing the mother-of-pearl bead nucleus.  His "ah-ha" moment occurred when he realized he could do that on purpose for a singularly beautiful effect, if the pearl were nucleated with a gemstone bead in the center.                     At first, he didn't get much cooperation from the pearl farms where the cultivation of pearls occurs.  As every visionary knows, however, infinite resources are always available, even if it doesn't look like it.  As a result, since 2005 he now owns his own pearl growing farm in his native Vietnam.                   Perfectly round gemstone beads are used for the nucleus, such as amethyst, citrine, turquoise and coral.  The coral is lab grown, to save the endangered beds of natural corals.   The oyster, Pinctada maxima, grows nacre around the gemstone nucleus for about a year, developing a thick lustrous  exterior coating of nacre.  The designs are then carved deeply into the nacre, revealing the gemstone beneath.  Turquoise has proven to be the most popular, the bright "robin's egg blue" interior providing such a  striking contrast to the soft, dark grey surface of the nacre.

The birthplace of a pearl...symbol of healing and transformation. 

The quality of his work is consistently high.   In his own words:  "We create each piece as if to be worn by our beloved."                      Define the irritant in your life--whether that is illness, a troubled relationship, financial woes--and then set your course on what it means to transform that irritant into something positive.  Are Galatea's pearls a meaningful symbol for you?  Courage.  Perseverance.  Love.  Staying true to yourself, despite obstacles.  Staying on course to realize your vision, even if it takes time, like the oyster building up the nacre. Send me an email if you would like to know about purchasing a Galatea creation. 

THE MAGIC OF GEMSTONES.....really?

Photo courtesy of Dane A. Penland,  Smithsonian Institute
Examples of the common mineral quartz, a popular talisman

"I command you to turn into a frog!" At a family reunion a few years  back, a young cousin enthusiastically waved her magic wand at various relatives, with great expectation for a successful transmogrification.  Eventually, in disgust, she threw her wand down, muttering "It doesn't work!"

And such it is with gemstones.  Expect a citrine to bring you wealth, and you too might mutter "It doesn't work!" but darn it, it would be nice if it did.   Google the phrase "healing properties of gemstones" and in 1/5th of a second,  58,000 results appear.   As I looked at page after page of websites, most offering talismanic jewelry of one sort or another, I couldn't help but laugh that Science had delivered to me an instant, global marketplace of the Superstitious.  Most of us won't readily admit in public to fringe ideas like crystal healing, amulets or lucky charms, yet.... there is something gnawing at us about this idea nonetheless.  Somehow we suspect an agate isn't just an agate.  Or is it?

One of the search results that came up close to the top when I googled the phrase "gem lore" was a fairly comprehensive list of gemstones and their uses, compiled by a bead artist.   I learned that moss agate, for example, promotes prosperity and abundance, and fluorite is said to attract fairies.  The designer, who seemed hopeful of a positive result for the wearer of her beads, was nevertheless careful to put a caveat at the beginning of the list:  

Please enjoy these but understand that we cannot guarantee that your stones will provide these or any benefits!

Gee, what about a necklace of malachite or moonstone or something that would effectively ward off lawsuits from crazy customers who expect a guarantee their bunions will disappear?  Sigh.   

Yes, I am making fun of this, but I have a surprise for you. The truth is, I actually do believe that gemstones--and jewelry too--have properties of healing, and in a much more profound way than is widely recognized.   I believe that the insightful story of gemstones and jewelry is far more meaningful than pseudo-lore.  I believe that the-something-gnawing-on-us about the idea that "an agate isn't just an agate" has a basis for a reasonable, warranted belief.    I believe that jewelry is at its heart a spiritual gift from the universe made tangible, and that it helps us recall our connection to the earth and each other.  I believe that jewelry can and does resonate for the wearer, like a tuning fork serves to align an instrument with the perfect pitch.

My mission in this blog is to share the authentic magic of gems and jewelry, as I have come to know them intimately throughout my entire adult life, in a career spanning 35 years.  I know from years of seasoning that jewelry makes a difference in the world, that it has the power to radiate meaning like nothing else.  

I warmly invite you to share your comments, questions, pictures, or your own anecdotes and observations of the gemstones and jewelry you wonder about or treasure.  I hope you will enjoy what I offer here.

JEWELRY: THE STORY BEGINS

Photograph courtesy of Ian Cartwright, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University

Researchers say that these four beads are 82,000 years old.  They were found in the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt in eastern Morocco. Another important site at Skhul, Israel has similar beads thought to be 100,000 or more years old.  Intentionally collected, transported, sorted for size, perforated, and decorated, these beads were as inspired in their making as the modern example below. 

For more information, visit http://anthropology.net/2007/06/04/82000-year-old-jewellery-found/

The other day I overheard my esteemed colleague and friend Ron Holliday say in a casual conversation: "The wearing of jewelry is such a basic impulse, going back to the days when humans first noticed a pretty shell on the beach. They picked it up and put a string on it to wear around their neck--and we're still more or less doing the same thing today."

That got me to thinking about the current scholarship, on what actually is thought to be the first known ornament used to adorn the human body. As it turns out, Ron was right. Shells, specifically Nassarius kraussianus, as well as a few others, have been identified recently as the oldest jewelry yet known. Shell beads like you see in the photo were worn as far back as 100,000 years ago, and possibly even earlier than that. The wearing of symbolic ornamentation is among the very first signs of the cognitive development we associate with modern human beings.

Now this is what I find fascinating:  these shell beads were found quite some distance from their source, from a few miles to hundreds of miles inland.  Think about what that means in energy expended, walking hundreds of  miles from home to acquire something of symbolic value.   If you're not walking that far, then you're trading something dear you already own, or you're otherwise expending a certain amount of your life force  towards acquiring these precious objects.  And it's not because it will actually make you less hungry, or warmer, or well.  Lost in the mists of time is the moment that that these shells went from being simply the protection for a snail to being something quite resonant: an object to be keenly desired as a symbol, conveying information about one's self, one's affiliations, one's power, or perhaps even, simply, one's desire for protection.  Symbolic.  Important.  At the dawn of human consciousness, personal adornments--jewelry-- were among the first objects that had meaning.

Are we that different from our ancestors? Contrast ancient economy to modern economy. Would you walk three days to own a few dozen snail shells, perforated, incised and covered with red ochre? Perhaps not, but you might work three days at your job to acquire an object of beauty from your favorite jewelry store. And what I say to that is: Celebrate it! It's so much a part of who we are. It's what makes us human, this desire to wear something symbolic, something tangible. Jewelry always has, and always will, express our fundamental ideas about who we are and why we're here, without saying a word.

Photograph courtesy of Galatea, Jewelry by Artist

Contemporary innovative artist Chi Galatea Huynh has created a masterful bead, by using a turquoise bead nucleus inserted into  a black-lipped oyster Pinctada Margaritifera.   After the layers of black nacre are  deposited onto the bead and the nucleus is completely hidden, Galatea reveals the turquoise beneath once again, by incising designs into the bead.  Many of Galatea's pearls, like these examples, also contain a diamond  set in gold.

For more information, visit http://www.galateausa.com/

Think about it: after thousands upon thousands of years, these beads are still telling their story about a life once lived. What will your jewel legacy be?