Featured Lab Opal earrings?

Haven’t bought anything quite like these before. I’m guessing they are lab opals?
I’ve seen the Opal glass before but these look different having much stronger colours. 10mm wide, enclosed silver backs. Any info please? Thanks

 

Lovely. Real opals, but probably triplets, given the closed backs. The colour patterns change, whereas in lab opals they stay the same.

Just to make sure they are triplets, if you look at an opal from the side, do you see a clear layer on top?

 

Wow, nice surprise for me, thank you AJ. Here’s a couple of side pics, doesn’t appear to be anything other than Opal there.
BTW AJ, I never heard anything back from the Northampton Shoe museum about my avatar and the German people just said they had no information to give me. At least they replied, I did think they would have shown some interest and asked for more pics but no.

 

And they're lovely and lively Aussie opals, not Ethiopian like so many you see now.

I agree, looks solid. Probably a thin layer, but beautiful nonetheless. I bet the colours dance when you wear them and move your head.

Ah well, at least we found out it had something to do with shoe making, and possibly a guild. You never know, someone may come across your thread in a year or so, and know exactly what it is. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

They're Native American in style, and NA earrings almost always use synthetic opal. Opal doublets or triplets would make sense too, since these aren't inlay pieces. Real ones are just about impossible to cut the right way for inlay. Are there any marks on the back?

 

No marks except 925 on the posts and wingnuts.
Depth allocated for the stone is 3.5 mm. stones are cold and tooth tap as glasslike so I’m not thinking plastic/resin. If they are synthetic they do look pretty good.

 

Nice earrings, lovely color. I'm very distracted by what the earrings are laying on. Is it a gob of plaster of paris? Or something else?

 

It’s UHU white tack. Handy stuff for positioning things without causing damage. IT does tend to pick up dust etc which is a nuisance because it looks grubby in my pictures.

 

Oh! I've seen this stuff once before. The person used it to secure the lids on her cookie jar collection. Far fewer broken lids when people handled them. Your pictures don't look grubby (never used that word until now), they look like there's an interesting "thing" they're sitting on. The color reminds me of what I saw in Italy on Michelangelo's David, same shade of white.

 

A bit too generic though. They could have been made in India or Thailand imo.
This style with good stones and only marked 925 often means India.

 

Or Thailand. Wouldn't surprise me, since NA smiths as far as I know never work in real opals.

 

Thanks for that information to AJ... I have wondered about your avatar periodically.

 

It’s one of my favourite jumble sale finds. I just didn’t know if these sort of hanging boxes were a thing for boot makers. Someone spent a long time making this. There is an old brass and copper website I will try next.