Rare Orpheus Agate Designer Cut Cabochon, Designer Cabochons

This stunning one-of-a-kind cabochon of rare Orpheus Agate has beautiful rare highly colorful plume formations in a base of clear agate beautifully framed by green and gold bands. Shades of rich greens and golds dominate, with a very rare plumes of red sienna highlighting the landscape scene. Orpheus Agate comes from Bulgaria and rarely found on the market. This striking cabochon is ready to become a high-end piece of jewelry or a top shelf collector piece. There are minor healed fractures in the stone, but they are fully healed and add to the organic feel of this cabochon.

Orpheus Agate has definitely been one of my favorite materials to cut. It can be unforgiving, frustrating and heart-breaking as well as anything else I've ever cut, but it's also been so incredibly rewarding and so often surprising and jaw dropping when slicing into a new piece of unassuming looking rough. The cabochon offered here was definitely a part of one of those special moments of finding that never before seen treasure hiding in a simple, ordinary looking, and somewhat dirty greenish rock.

It should be noted that, as can be seen in the close-up photos, there are a very few minor healed hairline stress fractures within the stone, which is Very common for Orpheus Agate, but they don’t pose any threat to the stability or overall aesthetics of the cabochon. Though they are visible in the photos, they are not really noticeable in person, as the close-up photos really hide nothing here. ;)

Orpheus Agate Designer Cut Cabochon
43.1 x 21.7 x 6.2mm
41.33 cts.

I cut this cab by hand and it's been polished to a high polish both front and back with slightly rounded bottom edges for easy and safe setting.

Note that all my photos were taken using full spectrum lighting, which does fairly well in replicating natural sunlight. However, almost all cut stones will look best and brightest in direct sunlight.

This rare agate comes from Kardzhali - Bulgaria. In 2004 the Agate exhibition in Munich found that Orpheus agate is unique in the world. Named after the ancient legendary Greek musical hero who frolicked in the area where the deposit is located. This unusual and rare stone from Bulgaria can be comprised of many layers of beautiful green Seladonit and golden yellow/brown jasper with some pockets of clear agate, with, on rare occasions, beautiful plumes within the clear agate.