Named Stones

Lightning Ridge has produced many famous black opals over the 120+ years since the discovery of opal on the ironstone ridges. In the first decades of opal mining at Lightning Ridge, it was very popular to name significant stones, particularly those that were especially large, beautiful or valuable. Naming stones became such an art form that there were rules in place for which stones should or should not be given names, and some people were called upon often for their skill in naming stones; John Landers is regularly cited as a trusted namer of opals!

There are a dozen or so very famous stones found between 1908 and 1928 that are historically and culturally significant to Lightning Ridge. The stones have worldwide connections from the likes of famed gem collector Kelsey I. Newman to the collections of J. D. Rockefeller and the American Museum of Natural History. Locally they are part of the town’s culture and geography with several local streets named after famous stones.

The history of these opals is wonderful and fascinating, but also frustrating, confusing, convoluted and in many cases riddled with misleading and incorrect information. Stories about famous stones are fun to tell, and it’s inevitable that over time these tales get exaggerated and misquoted, leaving us with quite the mess to clean up.

This series of articles seeks to organise the facts about these stones and present the likely truth about their discoveries, sales, ownership histories and current whereabouts. These stories will not be perfect as there are holes in the historical record that can never be filled, but we have been diligent in our research and made our best efforts to build an accurate timeline of events for each stone, and will discuss and illustrate discrepancies as they arise. (We have also solved some very old mysteries in the course of our research for these articles.)