Yeah, that's a harlequin; I can see it it's got a harlequin in it!
No, that's not a harlequin No no no no no no no it's a harlequin
I'm sorry but that's not a harlequin. That is a harlequin.
You're dreaming! That is not a harlequin. That's a harlequin!
That is not a harlequin! That has got to be a harlequin.
I'll tell you now that is not a harlequin! Today, we're going to be doing talking about
opal patterns. I'm Justin and this is black opal direct my family have been teaching and exploring
opal since 1961. click the subscribe button and enjoy as we dive into the best gem in the world
black opal so today um i've chosen a whole bunch of stones with similar patterns to show you
um kind of um that many patterns can look slightly different but still be the same pattern
now um i've chosen flagstone pattern as the first pattern for us to go through because
um i find a lot of stones a lot of nice gems have flagstone and i would like to explain to you um
that flagstone can look different but still be considered flagstone pattern so i'll just get into
it um i've picked out some of the nicest gems that i've got in my in my stock and i want to show you
what i mean by flagstone patterns so for instance this stone here you can see there's little flakes
of color this is a flake of color this here is a flake of color there's more flakes of color that's
a flake of color so you can see that there's as i move it around there's another one there
that there is lots of flakes of color and they're all pretty much joining up in this stone now it
doesn't happen have to have to happen that often all the time that they join up but that is like
a flagstone paving flagstone ground it can be even bricks or it can be uneven bricks or pavers
so this is the reason why they call it flagstone and that's a good representation now i'll show you
another stone here now while this has got some pin fire pattern here there is some smaller pattern
there you can see the larger flakes a larger flag there and as you move it around there there there
they are all flagstone pattern and so now this one has a little bit more depth to it
but um so there's color underneath the higher pin fire pattern and underneath there is some
flagstone pattern showing up so you can see it there and underneath there come showing up there
a little bit on the edge there that's another one there so this is another form of flagstone
pattern so that helps this one here you can see now it has that magical blue red and blue red is
probably the most rare color combination in opal but you can see in this one also there's a flag
flagstone there's a multi-coloured flagstone right there and there's one there one there so you can
see that most of this is flagstone now it's more flagstone on that side of the stone than this side
of the stain this stone side starts becoming a little bit more sheen and floral sort of pattern
now this one here is another nice stone that's inaccurate in our stock and you can see that
it has flags as well so flagstone don't get it mistaken with flag and flagstone flag pattern
is different to flagstone this is a flagstone pattern there there's a little one there so
there's one there it's in a funny shape but it's still considered flagstone there's another one
there and you can see this here is a little bit of broad flash pattern happening on the edge but um
because it's part of all this i would consider the whole thing as flagstand pattern you can see that
one flag right in the flagstone right in there too so there's some really good examples this one here
is a perfect prime example of flagstone pattern and it's double sided and you can see very clearly
those flakes of color now this one you could could consider this pattern as well as fl cloverleaf
pattern as well as flagstone because some of it does look a little bit like clover leaves
um i would just pretty much name it flagstone because there's some beautifully segmented
flakes of color especially on this side you can see it very clearly these little web lines
between the color flakes that's a very distinct color flake and there's one there one over there
so you can see that that is flag stamp pattern the next pattern i'm going to share with you
is called floral pattern now floral pattern is a little bit different to flagstone pattern
you can see in this stone see you do have some flakes of flag in there so this is a flagstone
pattern and that's sort of a flag no not really that's a flagstone pattern but when you start to
get clusters of color all mixed up together like like they are you consider that flagstone pattern
let me show you another example so you can see there is a little bit of flagstone pattern there
um but it moves around and there's a lot like there are clusters of color flakes of color
this is what you would call floral pattern so if you think of a bouquet of flowers and you
see a nice bunch of flakes of color everywhere from the flowers it's very similar to this so if
you were to see this here looks like a bouquet of flowers so you would consider this sort of thing
floral pattern another example is this one so there are some bits of flagstone pattern but
it's mixed in with other color so you're going to consider this as floral pattern
now if you look really closely into these strains you could you know to name it that's floral
flagstone then there's floral then there's chaff there's
like a whole different heap of patterns if you get delved too deeply into a stone and
I don't believe you actually should I think you should just go with what the predominant pattern
is in the stone or a mixture of two predominant patterns I wouldn't go to make out that there's
oh it's got chaff harlequin you know so many different patterns because it gets confusing and
it's pretty much untrue so this one here you can see there's also some flagstone pattern in there
but there's a lot of mixture of um things going on so this could be a whole bouquet of flowers there
there also so you would and this is also got a little bit of depth to it this stone so you
would consider this flag flagstone floral pattern if you were to get really technical that's what i
would call that so there's five different styles of of a floral pattern and you can
see that all of the gems look different but they have a similar kind of pattern
for the most part now here's another type of pattern that i only have one of right now and that
is called ribbon pattern now you can see in this ribbon pattern let me just wipe it with a cloth
you can see this ribbon pattern you can see exactly why it's called ribbon pattern because
those those flakes of color which you could consider a flagstone pattern or you could call it
uh rib flagstone ribbon pattern or ribbon flag stone pattern you can see the pattern
rolls across in the segments themselves so this here is the whole flagstone but because
this this color rolls with the stone back and forth like that that is considered ribbon pattern
and when you look at the whole stone you see every single flake of color moving as i move it like
a like it's coming from a nuclei here if you wanted to get really technical you could call
this a stereo pattern where the color comes out but a stereo pattern usually has the nuclei in
the center and then the colours come out from the middle of that so this is more much more closer
to rolling ribbon pattern or ribbon pattern or flagstone ribbon pattern so there you go
so the next pattern that we're um we're going to look at is chaff pattern now chaff pattern
looks like a scratch like a bear scratch on a tree you can see it in opal now chaff pattern doesn't
usually show up on all of a whole stone like it's very rare for chaff pattern to be right across
the whole stone so as you can see in this piece you can see there's a whole bunch of floral
pattern here there's a flagstone pattern there and these three little lines that's called chaff there
should be more chaff in there but um let's find it let's get the cloth onto it make it a bit shinier
and we'll find there we go there is some chaff pattern see these three lines here this is what
you would consider chaff pattern now that is in a flagstone flake of color and all a
lot of this side of the stone is flagstone so you could call that flagstone flagstone
slash chaff pattern so let me give you another example in another stone of
flagstone I mean sorry chaff we're into chaff again
this one has a nice broad flash pattern you can see that broad flash is amazing but we're not
looking for that we're looking for the chaff pattern which is sitting here which are lined
like a scratch and there's so you can see in some stones they're very very distinct chaff pattern
now this one's you know kind of hard to see it
you see there's a little couple of lines there as well they would be considered chaff
when you get those lines um crossing over like all over then you start getting into script pattern
but this is chaff let me show you on another stone this one's a bit more distinct on the
chaff pattern you can really quite see it really well this is a nice piece of chaff pattern this is
a nice chaff pattern you can see the scratches there and also it is flagstone chaff pattern
you can see that every just about everything in this stone has scratch lines in the pattern
so let's look at one more stone and this one has very distinct it's got a very broad flash
pattern there but then you've got this very distinct three scratches right there which is
pretty much chaff pattern now if you look at this stone from the other angle you can
see here as well lines going this way that is also a form of chaff pattern
it's very um difficult to get it out of this stone but um i think it pretty much explains
itself what is chaff pattern okay so a double up on a couple of the stones um just to show you
because there is another pattern in some of the stones we've already seen so now we're going to
concentrate on broad flash pattern which is a pattern that usually spreads across
the whole stone so you can see this stone we've already looked at the chaff pattern in there
but we can also look at that red see that red going across that stone that is what you
call broad flash pattern because it's pretty much goes right across broad across the stone
and is very distinct now broad flash can sit with other patterns very qui very often so you you
will get a broad flash and you'll usually get some patterns over the top of that broad flash pattern
and here's a the other example of the broad flash that we found the chaff pattern in this stone as
well but when you look at it from a certain angle you can see that it's got broad flash pattern so
that pattern going right across the stain is what you would consider broad flash pattern
now there's patterns in between that broad flash pattern that show up right so it kind of crosses
into two two or three different patterns but there is an underlying glow that goes across the stone
and reaches out the whole way which is pretty much broad and brought across the whole stone now this
one's pretty much a an example of broad flash that has really no other patterns in it so you
can see that it stretches right across the whole stone and really doesn't get inhibited by any
other pattern whatsoever so that is a really prime example of a broad flash pattern so you will see
many many listings on the internet that say the opals are harlequin and people just mostly use
that word to try and sell their opal which they're actually doing themselves a disservice because
um they're confusing the opel community for one and um and they're making themselves look stupid
because harlequin opal there's probably maybe five on the internet at the moment that
would be considered harlequin pattern and harlequin pattern is a very very rare type
of pattern that you can't just call any old stone harlequin and if your harlequin opal has
one square of color or two squares of color in it that's not considered harlequin not at all by
a long shot that's still flagstone harlequin is a pretty much almost replica of a checkerboard
pattern so checkerboard is like a chess board and you got to get squares of pattern
like that in order to consider it harlequin now anything around that will be considered
flagstone because they are like flagstone pavers so i don't even have a harlequin in stock right
now to be able to show you what it looks like but i can give you a few examples like this
okay so the last pattern that we're going to go through is uh pin fire pattern so
there's a little bit conjecture about what is pinfire pattern and what is not and when you
look at a stone and you look at the size of it and you look at the size of the of the flakes of color
okay so this stone i showed you earlier with the flagstone pattern and it has some pin
fire pattern over the top now if you magnify this pattern here large enough it turns into flagstone
pattern and so you have to you have to be really careful um about how big the the pin fire pattern
is in conjunction with the size of the stone so for instance this stone here is a perfect
example of pinfire pattern because there is so much going on really tiny dots of color and very
pretty stone but you can see and the closer you bring it you could see if i was to magnify that
that would turn into flagstone pattern but because we're looking at the stone further back we can
see from with our naked eye that it looks more like pin pin fire so the same with this one if
i hold it up really close it looks like flat stone flagstone pattern but if i'm holding it far away
then you would consider the middle of that stone as pin fire pattern
this one here from a distance it looks like a pinfire pattern and up close it looks a little bit
it still looks like a pinfire pattern but it could also look like moss pattern as well
so pinfire pattern is small dots of color and this one is the most um
the most recognizable pinfire pattern that I have at the moment so hopefully, that helps well
there you go there are quite a few patterns I've gone through hopefully it helps you out to
understand opal a little bit better because opal can be really difficult to understand and when it
comes to pricing the pattern does play a big role as well as the brightness as well as the cut the
size and the color combinations there are so many factors the body tone so we will go through that
um again over the next probably six months we'll go through different parts as well as cutting some
other opal. So, I hope you enjoyed that and I'll see you next week. Thanks for watching!
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