A Cut Above

As most people are now aware, diamonds are graded with 4 C’s.  Those being Cut, Colour, Clarity and Carat weight.  Some stores now wrongly say you have 5 C’s with the fifth being a Certificate.  To be honest, if you buy a stone from a long established and reputable jeweller, you should not have any problems. This does not make a certificate redundant, but lessens the need for one.  Many of the diamond dealers that we deal with have supplied Dipples for many many years. Quite often we know them not just as business associates, but as friends as well.  Like us many manufacturers are family businesses  and are often based in the UK.

In this post, I am going to start elaborating on the 4 C’s, saying what they are, and what makes each ‘C’ important.

Before I go any further in these blog posts, I am going to write a disclaimer.  These are what I consider to be the best way to view the 4 C’s, and when buying a diamond you should not just look at the certificate.  You are not buying a piece of paper you are buying an object of hand crafted beauty.  This is what we look for when buying diamonds from our suppliers.

Cut: – This is the most important aspect especially in a brilliant cut diamond, however it is slightly less so in other cuts as many of the fancier cuts do not have a definitive scale written down.  You will probably have heard of Hearts and Arrows, XXX (X stands for eXcellant) and Excellent as ways of describing a very well cut diamond.  The first too notions refer to a brilliant cut, with Hearts and Arrows describing a pattern within the diamond that is visible through a light filtered viewer, Hearts and Fireburst is the highest grade available.  To obtain this grade you need to have perfect symmetry with all the facets on the diamond.  Triple X refers to the highest grade available for Polish, Symmetry and Proportions.  In short that means each facet on the diamond is polished very well, all the facets line up closely and each facet is the appropriate size.  Please bear with me as this is where it gets complicated! Just because a diamond has a XXX grade, this does not mean that it will automatically get a Hearts and Fireburst grade.  You need to be right at the top of the scale for proportions and symmetry to be awarded a Hearts and Fireburst grade. Just as the polish would not affect the pattern seen in a Hearts and Fireburst stone which could mean it is not a XXX stone. However it would have X grades for symmetry and proportions. Phew, I hope that is clear!!

So why is this all important?  The way that diamonds are graded varies from Gem lab to Gem lab e.g. GIA use a scale of 5 grades from Excellent to Poor, AGS use a numerical scale from 0 – 10 (0 being highest) This leaves us as consumers with a very complicated system that is not standardised over all laboratories.  The grade that is assigned to the stone is a combination of factors, Brilliance, graded against the amount of light reflected out of a diamond, Fire, graded against the splitting of light in the colours of the spectrum and finally the Scintillation, this is the prettiest as it is graded by the amount of sparkle, life and fire within the stone when it is moved. Once these have been graded the overall quality of the cut dependant on the polish, symmetry and proportions are all factored together to produce a final grade(s).So what can happen if the stone is not the highest grade?  Well a few things can happen….  Firstly it would be cheaper, as the saying goes you get what you pay for, although ironically often a worse cut stone would be a larger carat weight, however I’ll cover that later.  So with diamonds I can say the size does not matter!  The perfect proportions for a diamond actually tend to make the stone look larger as the stone is not as deep but is approximately the same width at the girdle.  A stone that is too deep would tend to loose light from the pavillion facets (these are the facets at the back of the diamond).  The cut has a direct affect on the return of light and thus the brilliance of the stone.  Hearts on Fire have an image on their website that shows this perfectly.

Why have I covered the Cut first?  Quite simply this is what a diamond is all about, especially if it is a brilliant cut.  A diamond, cut depending, should be bright, sparkly and full of life.  This is why I said earlier that you should not buy a piece of paper, you need to visit a jeweller as diamonds have the ability to ‘speak’ to the wearer.  This is probably why they have been so popular as tokens of love and used in bridal jewellery for many years.  Every hand cut diamond is unique, the overriding vast majority of stones cut today are still hand cut, no two stones will ever be exactly the same.  This adds to the intrinsic beauty of a diamond.

At Dipples we are proud to deal with many diamond dealers, who I am sure would favour the quality of cut over the other C’s.  Please visit either store to see our large selection of diamonds!  Oh and did I mention we have the world’s most perfectly cut diamonds in store?  Hearts on Fire!  These are the benchmark that we use to help us choose the brightest and prettiest diamonds in Norfolk! !

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.