Opalite Beaded Bracelet

Opalite is not mined but manufactured. The wider field of lab-created opal traces to French chemist Pierre Gilson, who developed the first synthetic opal in 1972 with commercial sales beginning in 1974; the simpler opalescent glass sold today as Opalite is a separate, later product that borrows opal's name and glow rather than its internal structure. Makers fuse silica-based glass with dolomite and metal oxide additives that scatter light, producing its signature milky blue-to-white sheen, and it has since become a popular, affordable alternative to genuine opal.

Opalite is a man-made glass composed primarily of silicon dioxide (silica), typically fused with dolomite and metal oxide additives, rather than a naturally occurring mineral. Like all glass it is amorphous, with no ordered crystal structure. Its milky blue-white color comes from light scattering as it interacts with those additives, the same optical family of effects that tints a clear sky blue, not from the stacked silica spheres that create true opal's rainbow play-of-color. Its Mohs hardness is roughly 5 to 6, depending on the source and glass formulation.

As a modern man-made glass, Opalite has no ancient legend of its own; the lore around it is borrowed from natural opal and moonstone., Because it mirrors opal's shimmer, sellers have lent it opal's old reputation as a stone of vision and inner sight., and Its pale, moonlit glow has led modern crystal circles to link it, like moonstone, to the moon and to intuition.