Lapis Lazuli has been appreciated since Antiquity (and no doubt long before any recorded history). The name we know it by is from the Latin of Ancient Rome and translates simply as “Stone Blue”. Ancient Egypt artisans worked with it, in jewellery and inlay, 1500 years before the Romans. And the source, over all this time, was always the same mountainous region of north-east Afghanistan from which came the Lapis in this strand.
The six small round 9ct Gold beads and the two flanking the Cornelian centre-bead  are London-made, the four flanking the two lovely little Corals are solid, not hollow, 9ct Gold handmade in Sydney.