Paul Cory's opal inlay is simple, but meticulous.

Cory pays strict attention to the color of the stones he uses, making sure that none jar or are out of place. In pieces that use a center stone (such as the pink and the blue tourmalines in the rings at the top and below right), he has been known to hold onto faceted stones for years before finding just the right opal. Photo © Jeff Scovil

Perhaps the most striking thing about Paul Cory's opal-inlay designs is what you don't see. Holding one of his five-piece inlay rings, visually tracing its contours, you won't see gaps between the opal and the gold channels, nor will you notice a single stone whose color clashes with any of its counterparts. Nor, for that matter, will you find an otherworldly design that seems to call attention to its own originality. What you will find is beautiful opal integrated seamlessly into a ring that has the understated look of a classic.

“You don't need to have tons of stuff going on in it,” says the down-to-earth, 39-year-old lapidary/goldsmith from Columbus, Ohio. “There's a tendency to get all hung up on bigger is better, and to think that the more pieces and the more curves and the more this and that, the fancier and the better it is. But the reality is, people love simplicity when it's carried out properly.”

It's a deceptive simplicity, though, for it belies how much work goes into these creations. Opal, after all, can invite the sort of jarring color combinations that would spoil his smooth, contemplative designs, and he has to be particularly diligent to combine only material that will enhance the overall design. In his most colorful works, where the opal is accentuated by a center stone (set by prong, channel, or bezel), he's been known to inventory faceted gems for years before acquiring the perfect opal to complement them.

The refinement extends beyond the appearance of the works, down to their construction. Cory brings to his designs a meticulous craftsmanship that makes each individual piece of jewelry both elegant and durable. Using top-quality Australian opal, he cuts a little thicker than he strictly has to, often curving the bottom precisely to the contour of the ring's channel. The result is a piece of jewelry where everything fits just right, and which people have an easy time falling in love with.

“People are not buying it for gifts, they're buying it for themselves,” says Cory, whose company, Iteco, Inc., markets his line mainly through independent retailers. “And the reason they buy it right on the spot instead of dragging their feet is because they know that if they try and order one later, with opal always being so different, there's a good chance that they won't get what they saw and [were so drawn to] the first time.”

One of Paul Cory's five-piece inlay rings: the look is one of deceptive simplicity. Photo © Jeff Scovil

PASSION AND PRACTICALITY. Cory can relate to being hooked by opal, which he started cutting as a teenager. For a high school art course, he and his fellow students were allowed to pursue work outside the classroom, in the medium of their choice. A friend who had joined a local lapidary club showed Cory the Mexican opal he had purchased through Lapidary Journal, and told him how much he enjoyed cutting. Not having access to cutting equipment, Cory joined the club, where he and his friend were the “only ones who didn't have gray hair.” At the time, opal was the most practical stone to cut, since it was more affordable and easier to obtain in good qualities than the better grades of faceting rough. But it didn't take long for practicality to give way to passion. “Pretty much anyone who's ever cut opal will tell you it doesn't take long for it to get into your blood,” he says with a broad smile.

Cory started off cutting free-form cabochons, for which demand was soaring in the 1970s. “At that time, there were lots of goldsmiths and stone setters who wanted that. Today, the market has completely shifted, and most of the demand is now for standard ovals and calibrated.”

In 1985, he began inlaying, once again because it allowed him to work with top-grade material. “The smaller material was all I could afford,” he recalls. “I figured, 'Well, here's the material nobody else wants. What are we going to be able to do with this to make it look good?' And inlay just seemed to be the way to go. I'd inlaid lapis, malachite, onyx, coral, and turquoise, and I just decided, 'Why not opal?'”

With the stone becoming increasingly popular, it was an idea that a lot of people were having. Cory says that since the mid-1990s, the number of people doing opal inlay has been doubling each year. “I think a lot of people have found that it's a good way to get rid of some smaller pieces [from their parcels], and they've decided to make it a bigger part of their lines,” he says. Over the same time period, he adds, “[A] lot of people have quit doing it, too, because they realize that it's labor intensive, and that unless you're doing a huge volume of it, it doesn't pay.”

Because of this hard truth, the field has become dominated by large manufacturers whose ultrasonic cutting machines and overseas factory cutters can outproduce the single artisan by a huge margin. Unable to compete with the large players in terms of production scale or buying power, Cory has nonetheless persevered, excelling in areas of design which they can't match: superior finish and color consistency.

“With the big guys, there's absolutely no way their lines can be as consistent as mine,” he says with characteristic frankness.

“Their overhead is so high that they need to move tremendous volumes of opal inlay, and when you're forced to move that volume, no matter how precise the inlay is, no matter how duplicable the settings are, there's virtually no way that the opal is always going to coordinate. You just don't have the time, money or inventory to coordinate every ring.”

PRELIMINARY WORK. The supreme virtue of precious opal - its dynamic play-of-color - is what makes it uniquely challenging to inlay in jewelry. That's why Cory places so much emphasis on the preliminary stages of design, examining how best to capture the stones' colors, and considering how to combine them. “There's nothing more difficult to inlay, in my opinion, than opal. Because of the way opal forms, some layers are brighter than others, and you've got to be able to capture the brightest layer of color,” he says. Unlike free-form artists, who tend to cut for maximum yield, Cory is cutting for maximum color from relatively small pieces of rough, which he will grind down to a depth of two to three millimeters, holding each piece between his thumb and middle finger. “You have to just have a sense for where you can sand down and keep getting the color better without crossing that line where you lose it all.”

Cory is amazed that so many jewelers still prong-set their opal - he bezel sets or inlays his opal, curving the bottom of the stone to eliminate any gaps between stone and metal, ensuring durability. Photo © Jeff Scovil

Sorting through his rough, he holds each stone up to the light to determine which side will face upward once set in its channel. If the color is bright and well-dispersed on a piece of opal that is, say, half an inch by a quarter inch, he will likely cut it for a single-stone ring. If the best color comes from the side view, then he will use this in a multiple-piece inlay set.

“You may think you know which is the top and which is the bottom, but until you get all the sand off, you don't know where the color's going to be better,” he says, pointing to a key dilemma. “Do you cut a duller stone that's bigger, or do you cut a real bright stone from the side, but need lots of little stones? For me, personally, quality always sells. I pay the price for that, because I can inlay a piece in 45 minutes but if I had to inlay six across, it's a 2 1/2- to three-hour inlay. But I would rather spend three times as much time on it to get the very best color.”

Because he works with crystal opal (transparent to translucent opal in transmitted light, with play-of-color seen by reflected light), Cory uses a special technique to darken the stone and thus deepen the colors - something which enables him to offer a “black opal look without a black opal price.” Without revealing his particular method, he points to three options: the back of the stone itself can be darkened, either with black ink or paint, or by using a black epoxy, or the opal can be placed over gold which has been darkened. “Everybody darkens it, because if you don't, then the gold reflects through and the color washes out. It's that simple.”

Where Cory's work is truly distinct, though, is in his cutting approach. In single-stone rings, where the channels are flat, he will typically inlay opal thicker than two millimeters, so that the material can later be repolished. In multiple stone inlays where the opals curve with the ring, he starts with material at least three millimeters thick, curving the bottom of each stone so that it is completely flush against the channel.

“For the curved pieces, I have to start with at least three millimeters, because you lose at least one millimeter when you curve it. And that's why most people won't curve the bottom. They'll do flat, because it's higher yield, it takes less time, and you can do smaller pieces and you'll lose less rough. But it can make a big difference in how long it lasts.”

This is painstaking work. He recently calculated how many times he grinds a piece and checks it before grinding down further. Showing me the work he did on a five-stone ring, he says it took him 850 grinds from start to finish. “I can get 95 percent of the material ground away in 10 or 15 minutes. The other five percent takes an hour and a half. The problem is, if you don't do it that way, you have gaps between the opal and the metal.”

Although Cory is best known for his inlaid opal rings (top left), he also applies his techniques to earrings (below left) and occasionally uses faceted stones, such as peridot (top right) to complement the opal's rich colors. Photo © Michael Leslie

OPAL CARE. Because these gaps are eliminated below the surface, Cory's work at this stage is not something customers are likely to notice visually. Yet he considers it vital to his goal of offering a durable product. “It bothered me that I was putting flat-bottomed opal in a curved channel, because, as you can imagine, when you have a flat line sitting on a curve, all the pressure is on one spot. With a curve on a curve, it cut the number of people who had cracked stone problems from maybe 10 percent to maybe 1/10 of a percent. It was that noticeable with that one change.” One retailer who's sold hundreds of Cory's rings says that apart from the color, he's most impressed with the “longevity” of the works. “I've been handling Paul's stuff for nine years, and we've had two rings that have come back to the store,” says Mike Bergmann of Galena Rock Shop in Galena, Illinois. “One was a ring with a center stone, and it had fallen off the woman's finger while she was doing dishes and went down the garbage disposal. The other was a construction worker, who wore a large, five-piece inlay ring. He wore it every day, and four years later brought it in and said, 'I'm missing these opals; fix it. I don't care what it costs.'”

What Bergmann has never dealt with is a ring in which the opal crazed on its own, which can be attributed largely to the quality of opal Cory uses.

“I've been making these inlay rings for about 15 years now, and in that time, I've probably had two rings returned that had a stone that cracked [on its own],” says Cory. “The key is to buy material from people you know, people who will guarantee it, and you don't buy the cheapest stone.” Using opal only from fields with a proven stability, such as the Australian sources at Mintabe, Andamooka, and Coober Pedy, has allowed Cory to design confidently, knowing that the stones won't craze or lose their color over time.

“Buying stable opal mined at fields with a known history is as safe as buying any other stone. The problem is, most people don't ask where the material comes from,” he says.

I ask Cory about some of the potential hazards involved in using opal in rings, a subject on which he has strong opinions. He's constantly amazed that so many jewelers fail to understand that bezel-setting or inlay are by far the best ways to set opal in rings. Instead, it's still far more common to see mainstream jewelers carrying prong-set boulder opal doublets and triplets while shunning inlay.

“How can taking a solid piece of opal and surrounding it with gold on five sides be less durable than gluing a paper-thin piece of opal to a hunk of rock, putting four prongs around it, and leaving all the sides which are covered with epoxy exposed to the elements?” he asks with an exasperated laugh.

Generally speaking, an opal ring requires the same sort of care one would give to any high-quality colored stone ring. Wearing it while washing dishes, for example, is a bad idea (especially if you have a garbage disposal). On the other hand, opal is more sensitive to extreme fluctuations in temperature. “Opal can take a lot of cold or a lot of heat, but it has to happen slow,” he says. When stepping out of one's house on a cold winter day, he recommends turning the opal part of the ring toward the inside of the palm, which generates warmth.

“Properly cared for, it can be an heirloom,” Cory says, though he strongly doubts that those who purchase these rings are storing them away, only to be worn on special occasions. Cory himself sports a diamond-centered wedding band he designed with opal inlaid on either side, and has worn it nearly every day for the last eight years. “The gold's real scratched up. What a bummer,” he says with a shrug and a grin.

Despite all of his meticulous attention to detail, the last thing he wants is people treating his works as if they were too precious. “My whole push has been to find a line of jewelry I can make that is affordable, that is classy, that has a real elegant look and feel to it, and that you're not afraid to wear.”