The Serena Necklace

Recently I had the opportunity to see a modern and famous previous opal necklace whilst in Lightning Ridge at this years opal festival.

The item is owned by a colleague Suzanne White and while there are perhaps records of major named precious Australian opals recorded in history, more modern, or more recent items seem not to have been well highlighted.

With this in mind I asked for some details from Sue regarding the the opal and the necklace, hence this post for Opal Academy. Well, at least a start to elucidating the details and history of this famous Australian opal.

So what is the Serena Necklace? Well, it is an 18ct white gold pendant designed and manufactured by Nic Cerrone of Sydney, the centrepiece is a large and stunning black opal carving weighing 205 carats.

The opal was originally a part of a collection of Lightning Ridge black opals known as the Rainbow collection (but more about that later). the gemstone was cut from a large opal nobby that was mined in the mid 1990’s at a field know as “T-bones” on the Coocoran, in the outlying fields of the Lightning Ridge Precious stones field.

The opal itself was cut and polished by a number of cutters with the express instructions not to cut the available opal in the traditional way. As a result the opal is a large free form undulating opal carving which shows a bright consistent blue green play-of-colour.

The setting designed and manufacture by Cerrone is in 18ct white gold with five wire claws supporting the opal, and with bezel set small round brilliant cut diamonds on the ends oc the claws to enhance the design. The bow is of a double loop shape micro bead set with small round diamonds and the other end supports a tiered conical point deign also micro bead set with runs diamonds. Around the side of the pendant (not seen in the front on view in the photograph) are more round diamonds an d63 round faceted blue natural Australian sapphires.

The original concept for the production of the necklace was to introduce and celebrate the inaugural Opal Jewellery design awards in 2000, and perhaps to also introduce a more artistic effort into designing opal jewellery with less waste and using more free form cutting designs as a potential for the better use of available opal material.

That said, perhaps just as important was the naming of the necklace which was conceived when the womens champion tennis player, Serena Williams was the first person to publicly wear the necklace when Serena visited the Sydney studio of Cerrone.

We will update this discussion when more information becomes available!