The Horse that Outlasted a Hollywood Career

Picture the boots first: the ones broken in by long days in red dirt, hands raw from working sun-cracked ground, mornings that start before sunrise and don’t let up until the light does. It’s the kind of image that could belong to any remote outpost. But the ground she works isn’t a mine — it’s an ancient crater on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she’s spent the last 30 years climbing coconut trees and pressing sugar cane.

Eight years ago, Kilauea erupted — decades of pressure finally breaking loose — taking many of her physical possessions with it and reshaping the very land she farms. It didn’t come back easy. She rebuilt and replanted anyway — which might be why an opal, shaped by pressure and time, meant something to her the moment it reached her hands — even if it was never meant to stay.

This is where I come in. An email from her landed in my inbox: her friend William, she explained, had kept the opal in a lockbox in Oahu for years, always calling it “priceless,” before finally passing it along to her — an opal carved into the shape of a horse, mane and tail rendered in wave after wave of shimmering fire, 15.86 grams, just under 80 carats, set in gold by a Chicago jeweler an estimated sixty years ago. She knew little about its provenance, but my best guess was a Crystal Opal from Coober Pedy.

The opal, front and back

Striking as the opal was, I found the story behind it even more captivating. The horse was a gift from William’s dad, Arthur I. Appleton (heir to Chicago’s Appleton Electric Company) to his wife: Martha O’Driscoll, a Hollywood ingénue who’d spent the early 1940s playing opposite the era’s biggest names. In 1940 she was cast as Daisy Mae Scraggs in the first live-action Li’l Abner (alongside Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat) — a film so quirky it’s since become a footnote inside a modern classic: sixty-four years later, it’s the black-and-white movie Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams sit down to watch in The Notebook. Two years later, O’Driscoll stood beside Cecil B. DeMille on the set of Reap the Wild Wind — he was too busy filming to make it to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for his handprint ceremony, so the studio brought the wet concrete to him instead.

Martha O’Driscoll. Photo courtesy of the farmer

Then, in 1947, she married Arthur Appleton and retired from the screen entirely. But that wasn’t the end of their story. The Appletons went on to found Bridlewood Farm in Ocala, breeding close to 100 stakes winners, two Horses of the Year, and — most improbably — a colt named Smarty Jones, who trained on their land before winning the 2004 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. A family once defined by a Hollywood marriage became one of the great names in American racing. And this opal — a horse, carved in fire and set in gold — suited them perfectly.

William, the youngest of the Appletons’ four children, grew up gentle and easy to love.

William Appleton with one of his macaws; they would follow him to the beach and settle alongside him while he meditated. Image: Farmer’s own

Upon his passing, he left the opal to his dear friend — the farmer from Hawaii — who had reached out to see if I had a buyer for her stone. A piece like this — a big gem, carved into a horse — wasn’t for everyone. It deserved a particular kind of collector, someone who’d appreciate it beyond its appearance — just the way I did. So I suggested: let the appraiser see it first, and if they passed, I’d offer it to you. 🫵

Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about the stone’s story — so I’m sharing it. For me, what makes an opal priceless is never really its price tag or provenance or even the hands it passed through along the way. It’s the same thing that draws me toward every opal I choose: a gravitational pull, first toward its beauty, and then toward the story inside it, as though it had been building — under pressure — for years, waiting to be released. 🌋

Much like the opal in this Pendant — born from ground that cracked under pressure, and came out the other side with a story worth telling.

Warmest wishes,

Nicki

Founder & Designer, NIXIN Jewelry

PS: Fine art rising from the ashes? Do not miss the back of this piece! 🔥