About Us
Put very simply - we make opal jewellery! I work in silver and gold, make all the pieces myself, and everything is made around the opal.
I have had a store on Etsy for a few years, but would prefer to give people a more personal experience and be able to buy and converse directly with me. I have included a page with some of the testimonials from Etsy customers over the years I have been selling on there.
My history with opal begins during my early childhood years in Australia, I’ve been fascinated with them throughout my life, without being able to do anything about it.
A few years back we spent several months in Australia – including a road trip where we hired a camper van and travelled north from Sydney, up to Queensland and to a place called Lightning Ridge, which is very well known for its opal mines.
Whilst we were there we went on a tour of the mines, I was captivated by the whole process and especially by the gems themselves.
We also fossicked some tailings - this is spoil from the opal mines - to see if we could find any pieces of opal the miners had missed. We found some small pieces, nothing of any real value but still beautiful little bits of opal, which whetted my appetite even more!
I began cutting and polishing opals in our kitchen back in the UK and then progressed into a tiny shed at home. I ended up with many gorgeous polished gems, but soon realised I wanted to do something more with them.
As I’ve been a practical, hands-on engineer all my working life I began to make the jewellery myself, the process of metalworking uses very similar techniques that I am already very familiar with, just at a much smaller scale.