Diamonds – are they a girl’s best friend?

Diamonds….. are a girl’s best friend, or so the saying goes!  However they really should be as they can be one of the prettiest gemstones and generally are hard wearing.

Diamonds are one of the oldest gemstones on the planet, formed between 900 million and 4.25 billion years ago!  Diamonds can be said to last forever, formed at temperatures of around 1000 °C, a pressure of 50,000 bar and about 100 miles beneath the surface!  They are then carried to the surface in volcanic eruptions in Kimberlite magmas. Kimberlite was named after the town of Kimberley in South Africa where a large 83 carat diamond was discovered in 1871.

For over 3000 years, we have come to see a diamond as an item that is to be treasured.  In India, where they were first discovered it is thought that they had uses for both decoration and also for protection from evil spirits.  Diamonds have even been used in medicine. During the middle ages diamonds were believed to change colour in the presence of poisons and they were even eaten!  Pope Clement was given diamond dust to help cure him of his illness although, surprisingly, this did not work and in 1534 he died.

India was the main diamond producer in the world for many years and, when it became harder to find diamonds, small deposits were found in Brazil and a few other locations these, however, were barely able to keep up with demand.  Then in the mid 1800’s a diamond was found in South Africa and the world’s biggest diamond rush started.  India, although no longer the world’s largest diamond producer, has over ½ a million people employed in diamond cutting and connected jobs. They primarily  cut only small stones, with diamond cutters, leaving Isreal, Russia and Amsterdam to cut the better and generally larger diamonds.

It has been known, for many years, that diamonds are very hard wearing.  The old fashioned test, that was used to see if a stone was a diamond, was to hit it with a hammer. Unfortunately, people did not realise that diamonds can be cleaved which means that, at a certain point, the stone can split into two parts.  Many good diamonds were smashed and thrown away because of this.  Cleaving a diamond was pretty much the best way to facet a diamond as it only required a chisel and hammer.  Being able to hit it in the right spot, meant that the diamond would then only need rudimentary polishing of facets.  For the first two hundred years of diamond cutting, up until the 1400’s, fairly simple cuts were made which left the stone rather dark and dull.  During this time, coloured stones were still the most popular, because they looked prettier.  From the 1400’s to the early 1900’s improvements in the tools used to cut diamonds, meant that cutting became better and more complicated, improving the look of the stone.

At Dipples, we have sold diamonds for over 100 years on the Swan Lane site. We have seen the industry through its high’s and low’s.  Over the last 100 years, diamond cutting has changed considerably as science and machinery now work together.  In 1919 Marcel Tolkowsky developed the American Standard cut. At the time, this was the benchmark cut in North America. Later, versions on this cut would be developed although they all benefited from Marcel’s original discovery that if a diamond was cut too deep or too shallow, the light could escape from the sides or bottom of the diamond. This would then result in a loss of brilliance and fire from the top of the diamond.  The modern brilliant cut is a derivative of this cut.  We are proud to deal with the Hearts on Fire Diamond Company who cut the world’s most perfectly cut diamonds.  Without Marcel, however, who knows what shape we would be cutting diamonds in today.  Hearts on Fire takes Marcel’s original design and using the latest technology, releases the brilliance that all their diamonds can have.

Later on, we will focus on the grading of Diamonds, and hopefully make it all easier to understand.  But we’d also like to point out that grading is only subjective and it is always best to view a diamond, rather than just see it on a piece of paper.