A stone loaded with meaning
Few gems in history have accumulated as much mythology as the opal. Adored by some, feared by others, it has crossed civilizations and eras always carrying an aura of mystery. Understanding this cultural trajectory means understanding why the opal still provokes something that goes far beyond an aesthetic reaction.
Antiquity: the stone of all powers
The Romans considered the opal the most precious of all gemstones, precisely because it united within itself the colors of all other gems. Pliny the Elder wrote about it in the first century AD with barely contained admiration, describing its play of colors as the fusion of ruby, emerald, amethyst, and sapphire into a single object.
In ancient Rome, the opal was a symbol of hope and purity. The Emperor Mark Antony reportedly exiled a senator who refused to sell his opal, according to Pliny, an episode that illustrates how coveted the stone was among the elite.
Among Arabs, the opal was said to be a stone that fell from paradise during lightning, and it was believed to protect its wearer.
The invented bad reputation: the 19th-century novel
The great turning point in the opal's symbolic history came from a novel: Anne of Geierstein (1829) by Walter Scott. In it, a character wears an opal that reacts to holy water and fades with her death. The book was enormously successful and had a devastating effect on the opal market: according to historians of the gem trade, opal prices dropped dramatically after its publication, reportedly falling to half their value within years.
The association with bad luck is a fictional invention. There is no solid historical or traditional basis for this superstition: it is literally a 19th-century narrative creation that contaminated popular imagination and, remarkably, persists to this day.
Rehabilitation through European jewelry
The Art Nouveau movement, from the late 19th to early 20th century, reclaimed the opal with enthusiasm. Jewelers such as Rene Lalique and the house of Tiffany used the gem frequently, celebrating exactly what made it different: its irregularity, its organic quality, its unpredictable colors. The opal was the perfect gem for an aesthetic that celebrated nature and rejected classical rigidity.
Queen Victoria also contributed to the stone's rehabilitation by wearing and gifting Australian opals to her daughters, a gesture that signaled royal approval and helped restore the gem's reputation across Europe.
Opals in Brazil and popular culture
The opals of Piaui do not carry the same ancient historical record as Mesoamerican or European stones, but Pedro II built throughout the 20th century a local culture around the gem that is itself a form of heritage. The city became known as the Brazilian capital of opals, and the extraction and trade of stones became part of the regional identity.
Today, festivals, museums, and tourist routes in Pedro II celebrate the relationship between community and gem, transforming knowledge about opals into a living part of northeastern Brazilian interior culture.
The present: resonance with contemporary jewelry
In contemporary jewelry, the opal has found a natural home. An aesthetic that values singularity, the deconstruction of codes, and the relationship between material and meaning could not ignore a stone that is, by nature, unpredictable, irreproducible, and impossible to fully control. Using an opal today is a positioning. It is choosing complexity over simplicity, movement over stillness, narrative over pure ornament.
Source: GOMES, C.B. et al. As Opalas do Piaui [The Opals of Piaui]. Brasilia: CETEM/MCTI, 2025. Part of Fortes Jewellery's educational gemology series, based on scientific research by the Centro de Tecnologia Mineral of Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.