FACTS ABOUT DIAMONDS

In this section you can find further information about fancy coloured and laboratory creating diamonds, as well as gemmological characteristics of diamonds such as clarity, carat sizes and cuts.

Our dimonds are certificated by AnchorCert, subsidiary of Birmingham Assay Office. Please visit their website to learn more about diamonds and certification process.

Fancy Coloured Diamonds

Natural coloured diamonds are the most concentrated form of wealth due to their rarity.

According to some experts, only 6000 carats of laboratory created gem quality fancy coloured diamonds are produced, somewhat matching the annual output of natural fancy coloured coming out of the Argyle Mine in Western Australia. Argyle Mine in Western Australia is the largest source of fancy coloured diamonds, yet its main output is colourless diamonds. Fancy diamonds account for one in 10,000 carats. According to some estimates Argyle Mine has produced about 650 million carats in total since 1985, which is approximately 6500 carats of fancy coloured diamonds per year, similar to the volume of laboratory created diamonds.

Fancy Coloured Diamonds are found almost everywhere diamonds are mined, but only one in 10,000 carats are fancy coloured. Around 80% of fancy-colours are various intensities of brown. Yellow varieties are rarer followed by pink. Next are intense blue, pure green, pure orange and pure violets; red is the rarest and most precious of all.

Few people have heard of fancy coloured diamonds or appreciate their true beauty. With abundance of colourless diamonds, almost all advertising is biased towards convincing consumers that they are the only desirable colour. As much as it makes sense to the business, it also true that diamonds in a very short supply do not need to be advertised.

Laboratory Created Diamonds

Laboratory created diamonds share the same properties with natural diamonds except for age: they are hardly more than a few years old. Laboratory created gem quality diamonds are stunning, just as their natural counterpart, but they are produced by machine not the Earth.

Every diamond made in a laboratory is unique, and creation of each of them is mystical as no one is quite the same as the other. We offer diverse palette of colours and shapes to satisfy the most demanding customers.

According to expert estimates, the manufacturing capacity of laboratory created diamonds account for about 6,000 carats per annum. This is a drop in the ocean compared to the volume of fancy coloured diamonds offered on the market.

Laboratory created diamonds share the identical optical, chemical, and physical properties of natural diamonds.

The General Electric Company was the first to grow a diamond in 1956. That was a small industrial-quality gemstone. It took 15 years until the company had succeeded in growing a gem-quality one-carat diamond by 1971. The history of grown diamonds may be traced from that date.

Technology

The technology of creating diamond in a laboratory is rather complex. Each diamond grows in its own individual way. A typical laboratory has a throughput of two or three hundred diamonds annually. Thus, unlike the majority of synthetic mono-crystals, the grown diamond has a high production cost and results in a high price, which is still substantially lower than the price of natural fancy coloured diamonds.

Similarly to a natural diamond, a created diamond may have inclusions, because an absolutely pure diamond without any defects is more a theoretical concept, than natural phenomena. The conditions for the diamonds' growth process are so unstable and variable, that they always have either defects of mechanical origin, or foreign inclusions. At the present our technology allows growing high–clarity diamonds, no less than SI category according to GIA classification.

A diamond crystal grown in a laboratory is honey-yellow due to high content of nitrogen in source materials. To give diamonds colours similar to the colours of natural coloured diamonds (intensive-yellow, green, pink and red) we use post-production thermo-baric treatment which modifies the colour of the diamond at high pressures and high temperatures. This way we can obtain diamonds of different colours: yellow, red, green.

Diamonds and their Imitations

As applied to diamonds, the words grown or synthetic are usually associated in the mass consciousness with minerals only imitating natural diamond such as fianite, zircon, moissanite, etc. These minerals have refractive indexes and brilliance similar to diamond but generally have nothing to do with diamonds. Calling a diamond “grown,” we speak of a diamond which in its optical and physical properties is fully identical to a natural one except that it has been grown for you in the laboratory.

Carat

The carat weight of a diamond measures its mass. One carat is defined as exactly 200 milligrams (about 0.007 ounce). The point unit ¡ª equal to one one-hundredth of a carat (.01 carat, or 2 mg) ¡ª is commonly used to denominate the size of diamonds of less than one carat. All else being equal, the value of a diamond increases exponentially in relation to carat size. Larger diamonds are both rarer and more desirable for use as gemstones.

Total carat weight (t.c.w.) is a phrase used to describe the total mass of diamonds or other gemstone in a piece of jewellery, when more than one gemstone is used. Diamond earrings, for example, are usually quoted in t.c.w. when placed for sale, indicating the mass of both diamonds together and not each individual diamond.

Clarity

Diamonds are graded by the major societies on a scale ranging from Flawless, Very Very Slightly included (VVS), Very Slightly included (VS), Slightly Included (SI) to Imperfect.

Clarity is a measure of internal defects of a diamond called inclusions. Inclusions may be crystals of a foreign material or another diamond crystal, or structural imperfections such as tiny cracks that can appear whitish or cloudy.

Diamonds become increasingly rare when considering higher clarity grading. Only about 20 percent of all diamonds mined have a clarity rating high enough for the diamond to be considered appropriate for use as a gemstone.

Most inclusions present in gem-quality diamonds do not affect the diamonds' performance or structural integrity. However, large clouds can affect a diamond's ability to transmit and scatter light.

Colour

A chemically-pure and structurally-perfect diamond is perfectly transparent with no colour. The colour of a diamond may be affected by chemical impurities and/or structural defects in the crystal lattice. Most white diamonds are discounted in price as more yellow hue is detectable, while intense pink or blue diamonds (such as the Hope Diamond) can be dramatically more valuable.

Most diamonds used as gemstones are transparent with little tint, or white diamonds.

The GIA has developed a rating system for colour in white diamonds, from "D" to "Z" (with D being "colourless" and Z having a clear light yellow or brown coloration), which has been widely adopted in the industry and is universally recognized.

Diamonds with higher colour grades are rarer, in higher demand, and therefore more expensive, than lower colour grades.

Diamonds with unusual or intense coloration are sometimes labelled "fancy" by the diamond industry. Intense yellow coloration is considered one of the fancy colours, and is separate from the colour grades of white diamonds. Gemmologists have developed rating systems for fancy coloured diamonds, but they are not in common use due to the relative rarity of coloured diamonds.

Cut

The cut of a diamond describes the manner in which a diamond has been shaped and polished from its beginning form as a rough stone to its final gem proportions. The cut of a diamond describes both the shape a diamond is formed into, as well as the quality of workmanship. Diamond cutting is the art and science of creating a gem-quality diamond out of mined rough.

Diamonds do not show all of their beauty as rough stones; instead, they must be cut and polished to release the characteristic fire and brilliance that diamond gemstones are known for.

Diamonds are cut into a variety of shapes that are generally designed to accentuate these features.

The modern round brilliant has 57 facets (polished faces), counting 33 on the crown (the top half above the middle or girdle of the stone), and 24 on the pavilion (the lower half below the girdle).

Diamonds which are not cut to the specifications of a round brilliant shape (or subsequent variations) are known as fancy cuts. Popular fancy cuts include the baguette (from the French, resembling a loaf of bread), marquise, princess (square outline), heart, briolette (a form of the rose cut), and pear cuts.

Generally speaking, these "fancy cuts" are not held to the same strict standards as round brilliants. Cuts are influenced heavily by fashion: the baguette cut which accentuates a diamond's lustre and downplays its fire was all the rage during the Art Deco period, whereas the princess cut which accentuates a diamond's fire rather than its lustre is currently gaining popularity. The princess cut is also popular amongst diamond cutters: of all the cuts, it wastes the least of the original crystal. The past decades have seen the development of new diamond cuts, often based on a modification of an existing cut. Some of these include extra facets. These newly developed cuts are viewed by many as more of an attempt at brand differentiation by diamond sellers, than actual improvements to the state of the art.

Quality

The quality of a diamond's cut is widely considered the most important of the four Cs in determining the beauty of a diamond; indeed, it is commonly acknowledged that a well-cut diamond can appear to be of greater carat weight, and have clarity and colour appear to be of better grade than they actually are. The skill with which a diamond is cut determines its ability to reflect and refract light.

The cutting process

The process of shaping a rough diamond into a polished gemstone is both an art and a science. The choice of cut is often decided by the original shape of the rough stone, location of the inclusions and flaws to be eliminated, the preservation of the weight, popularity of certain shapes amongst consumers and many other considerations. The round brilliant cut is preferred when the crystal is an octahedron, as often two stones may be cut from one such crystal. Oddly shaped crystals such as the macle are more likely to be cut in a fancy cut that is, a cut other than the round brilliant which suits the particular crystal shape.

Even with modern techniques, the cutting and polishing of a diamond crystal always results in a dramatic loss of weight; rarely is it less than 50%. Sometimes the cutters compromise and accept lesser proportions and symmetry in order to avoid inclusions or to preserve the carat rating. Since the per-carat price of diamond shifts around key milestones (such as 1.00 carat), many one-carat diamonds are the result of compromising "Cut" for "Carat". Some jewellery experts advise consumers to buy a 0.99 carat diamond for its better price or buy a 1.10 carat diamond for its better cut, avoiding a 1.00 carat diamond which is more likely to be a poorly cut stone.

Gemmological Laboratories

Diamond certificates are issued by independent gemmological laboratories. There are several grading laboratories, the most prominent being: the International Gemological Institute (IGI); the Gemological Institute of America (GIA); the American Gem Society (AGS); the European Gemological Laboratories (EGL), Birmingham Assay Office's AnchorCert, HRD Laboratory (Hoge Raad voor Diamant) , GemEx Systems and a number of others.