925 Sterling Silver Lab Created Black Fire Opal Stud Earrings with CZ Accents

925 sterling silver stud earrings with lab created black fire opal inlay and CZ accents, marked 925. Each earring is formed as an elongated loop that crosses over itself near the top, leaving an open teardrop of negative space at the center. The opal is set as channel inlay rather than as a cabochon, meaning it is cut into flat segments and fitted into recesses in the silver with polished dividers left standing between them, so the color runs in bands broken by bright metal lines. Three small round CZs are channel set up the inner edge of the loop opposite the opal.

Black opal is the dark bodied variety, and the dark base is what makes the fire readable. Play of color in any opal is light bouncing back out of the stone, so against a pale body it competes with everything else the stone is reflecting and washes toward pastel. Against black it has nothing to compete with, and the reds and oranges come forward at full strength. These run heavily to red and orange, which in opal is the end of the spectrum that reads hottest and carries furthest across a room.

Posts with silicone backs.

Verifications:
Sterling silver has been verified using JSP Silver Testing Solution.

Details:
Metal: 925 Sterling Silver
Hallmarks: 925
Stones: Lab Created Black Fire Opal
Stone Setting: Channel inlay
Accent Stones: Cubic Zirconia
Accent Count: 3 per earring, 6 total
Accent Setting: Channel
Earring Style: Loop Stud
Closure: Post with silicone backs
Condition: Excellent estate condition

Fun Facts:
Opal has no crystal structure at all, which is why its color is not really color. Where every other gemstone owes its hue to trace elements sitting in a crystal lattice, opal is amorphous, built instead from untold millions of microscopic silica spheres stacked in an orderly array. Light entering that array diffracts off the gaps between spheres, and the size of the spheres determines which wavelength comes back out. Red requires the largest spheres of all, which is why red fire is the rarest and most prized thing opal does.
Opal resisted the laboratory far longer than ruby, sapphire or emerald, for the same reason. You cannot grow it as a crystal, because it is not one. Making it means building that ordered sphere array from scratch and persuading millions of identical silica spheres to settle into formation, a problem chemists did not solve until 1974, when Pierre Gilson produced the first synthetic opal in Switzerland. The material has carried his name ever since, and lab opal is still routinely called Gilson opal in the trade.