Diamonds
All About Diamonds
Diamonds History
Among all the known gemstones, diamonds have always been the most desired stones. People not only believed in diamonds’ “magical powers,” but also thought that their beauty and rarity made them the symbol of love and prosperity. Uncut diamonds were used for decorating the amour of great nights, and cut diamonds adorned the crowns of mighty kings and queens. Even in the present day, they are still considered a symbol of love and commitment.
The Greek and Roman translation of the word diamond (adamas/diamas) means “the unconquerable,” which truly reflects the fact that this gemstone is the nature’s hardest material, that can withstand both fire and steel. Diamonds earned their reputation of being indestructible, as people failed to conquer their undying strength and unbending power. 
For centuries, people ascribed mythical powers to diamonds, which could guard them from all evil forces, including snakes, fire, poison, illness, and even thieves. Diamonds have been thought to be particularly powerful for anyone born under the planet of Mars in the zodiac House of Aries. Diamonds would provide people born under this sign with everlasting love, fortitude, and strength of mind, and would defend them against witchcraft, poison, and nightmares.
In many European cultures, people believed that Diamonds could also help their owners remain brave in battle or could protect them against insanity. However, as with all magical powers, there was a catch to the diamond’s power – the diamond “needed” to find its owner to exude its magic. If purchased, the diamond believed to lose its potency. But, when given as pledge of love, its strength may return, which is why it is so widely present in the engagement rings. More about Diamonds History.
Diamond Structure
Chemically diamonds have the simplest structure among all gemstones. Remember the soot left at the bottom of a burnt tealight candle? Diamonds are made of the same substance, which is nothing but a crystallized carbon. But, unlike the soot in burnt up candles, the crystallized form of carbon gives birth to diamonds that have such super properties as resistance, brilliance, fire and unrivalled wearability. Remember, though, that despite being the most unyielding organic material ever known, diamonds could be easily chipped or even broken, if you happen to strike them hard from specific angles, or when you cut the diamond’s girdle too thin.
As far as the diamonds’ structure concerned, the transparent colorless diamond, often called a “white diamond” by inexperienced shoppers, is the most desirable and valuable variety. But, diamonds come in many colors. A “fancy diamond” is the one that possesses a color noticeable enough, with brown and yellow being the most popular and frequently occurring shades.
Some colors occur very rarely; among them are pink, light blue, light green, and lavender. Pastel colors are the normal color shades found in diamonds. The deeply dark colors that come in shades of red, green, or blue are very rare. Typically, you’ll find that many colored diamonds are sold for more compared to the colorless diamonds, with the exception of yellow and brown varieties, which in their very pale form are not even referred to as fancy diamonds by many specialists, but rather considered to be off-color diamonds.
These are the 4 Cs of diamonds – the four major factors that make up the diamond structure, determining how valuable the diamond is:
1. Carat - the diamond’s weight or size;
2. Cutting – the “make” of the diamond (refers to the proportions of the diamond);
3. Clarity – determines the flawlessness of the diamond;
4. Color – refers to the presence of color in a diamond or absence of such.
Bear in mind that your main goal should be to determine the overall effect all these factors have on the diamond: you’ll need to decide which of the 4 Cs are more important to you, so that you could strike a balance between your emotional needs and your wallet.
Diamond Cuts And Shapes
Now, that you know about the 4 Cs, you need to learn how to look at a diamond. Your first step will be to learn the terminology most jewelers would start throwing at you when trying to sell you diamonds. These are the most important terms you should know when speaking about faceted gemstones: girdle, crown, pavilion, culet, and table.
The table is the largest facet of the stone, representing the flat top of a diamond. Table spread refers to the stone’s table facet width. The rim or the border of the stone is called girdle, this is what forms the perimeter of the stone. Think of it as a dividing line where the top part of the stone meets the stone’s bottom. Crown is what you can see right above the girdle – this is the upper part of the diamond. Conversely, pavilion is what you can see right below the girdle – this is the lower part of the diamond. And, finally, culet is the lowest portion of the stone. If a diamond misses that part, most likely it means it has been damaged.
It’s important that you learn to distinguish between the diamond’s cut and shape. When jewelers talk about the stone’s cut, most people think they talk about the diamond’s shape, which is not true. When talking about the cut, jewelers mean the care and precision with which a rough diamond has been turned into a finished stone. Different shapes may affect how the finished diamonds look, but regardless of the shape, if expertly-cut, the diamond will preserve its brilliance, fire and the overall value.
As we mentioned before, diamonds come in many different shapes, with Cushion, Round, Marquise, Pear, Trilliant, Baguette, Heart, Emerald, and Oval being the most popular classic diamond shapes.
Remember, even though the diamond’s shape may change the personality of the stone, it’s the cutting that fully releases its beauty. When talking about the quality of the cutting, jewelers uses the term “make,” which is extremely important in diamonds as a stone with an “excellent make” will sell for way more than a diamond that only has a “fair make.”
Ideal Diamond Proportions
Brilliance and fire are the two components that determine the beauty of the cut diamonds. These two vitally depend on the overall proportions of a diamond. The factors that affect the proportions of a diamond are the ratio of the crown’s height to the pavilion’s depth and the ratio of the stone’s width to the table facet width. The experts are still arguing about the existence of ideal diamond proportions. They have been able to agree upon several formulas that work the best for the round diamonds (they call them “ideal” diamond proportions); however, these formulas do not necessarily work well for other diamond shapes. 
Keep in mind that diamonds cut to the “ideal” diamond proportions would always cost much more than other diamonds, mainly because of the extra skill and time involved into the process. Diamonds cut to such proportions would also lose a lot of stone’s “rough” material. Having said that, you should know that advanced research and modern technology along with some other factors have made it possible to create a broader range of stone proportions that can give way to equally stunning diamonds. These days, precision cutting still remains vital for revealing diamond’s maximum beauty.
Here are some clues as to which diamonds can have that “ideal” cut. When a diamond is cut with a smaller table, this produces more fire. Diamonds cut with bigger table yield more brilliance but have less fire. To-day, diamonds with larger tables seem to be more fashionable, and the increase in the brilliance factor may explain why. Ideal stones aim to reach a compromise that would allow the best brilliance and the best possible fire in a given diamond. There is no agreement with regard to the percentages as some people prefer fire to brilliance while others would favor brilliance to fire. This explains the existence of at least a couple of different “ideal” proportions, and it always will be a matter of personal choice as to which one is the best.
Your purpose as a prospective buyer is to determine if the diamond you are looking at has a fine make. Generally speaking, if the stone exudes a lot of fire and brilliance, then this stone has great proportions or, one can say that it is has a fine cut. If the stone has no life in it, and seem to be dark from across the center, this means it’s poorly cut and has bad proportions. Over time, as you become more experienced, you will be able to distinguish between the lifelessness and dullness, fire and brilliance.
Types of Diamond Cuts And Cutting Styles
As mentioned before, many people confuse diamond cutting with different shapes of diamonds. However, a cutting style used to create a diamond is the most important factor affecting the diamond’s value. Diamonds cut poorly will fetch 40 to 60% less than well-cut diamonds. Therefore, remember this – a diamond cut does not equal diamond shape. Jewelers talk about diamond shapes when they describe the outline of the stone’s rim. You would go with your individual preference, when selecting the diamond’s shape. However, it’s the cutting of the diamond that you need to evaluate to understand the real value of the diamond.
These are the three diamond cutting styles that you can pick from: brilliant cut, step cut, and mixed cut. Brilliant cutting style is by far the most popular style. It makes use of a lot of facets, but kite-shaped and triangular styles are used more frequently. To build the maximum brilliance a cutting expert need to know how to arrange facets in a specific way to achieve maximum brilliance in a diamond.
Less facets are used in the step cut, normally trapezoid or rectangular in shape, arranged in one continuous line (like in the emerald cut). Diamonds cut in this style won’t be as brilliant as the stones cut in the brilliant style, but step cut technique still can reveal a lot of fire in a diamond making it a very lovely and elegant stone that possesses some understated power.
Combining the step cut style with the brilliant style gives you a mixed cut style that uses the elements of both styles.
To properly evaluate the cut, you need to consider many different factors, including the stone’s finish and overall proportions. Those proportions together with the finish will impact how the diamond produces the fire (the dazzling rainbow colors that blaze from within the diamond) and the brilliance (the liveliness, the sparkle) that sets diamonds aside from the other gemstones.
Diamonds created with the round brilliant cutting style are considered the most popular. Your typical diamond with the round brilliant cut will have 58 facets, with 33 of them on the top, 24 on the bottom, and a culet that would complete the bottom. Jewelers also distinguish between the “full-cut” stones that have all 58 facets and the “Swiss-cut” and “single-cut” diamonds that would have only 33 and 17 facets respectively. The latter two would have less brilliance and liveliness than the full-cut diamonds, which is why they are less expensive as its easier and cheaper to cut them. At the moment, you can also find a lot of diamonds created with special cuts that feature more than 58 facets.
Generally speaking, round brilliant cutting technique produces diamonds with better brilliance than other cuts and shapes. However, there are many new shapes out there that compete quite successfully with the round-shaped diamonds for the overall brilliance and fire.
Diamond Clarity Scale
When jewelers need to evaluate the external and internal characteristics of a stone, they turn to the diamond clarity scale. They will be looking for blemishes and inclusions, where blemishes are referring to the diamond’s external defects and inclusions are dealing with the internal ones. Even though the diamond industry strives to use only clean stones, there are more diamonds coming into the market with all sorts of cracks and other defects.
One should understand, though, that most defects in a diamond won`t be seen with a naked eye. When jewelers and other experts examine a stone they always use a loupe with 10-power magnification – the whole diamond clarity grade is based on that technique. When determining a diamond’s clarity, experts evaluate such factors as the number of inclusions and blemishes found in the diamond along with their size, color, and location.
A flawless diamond is the one that has no imperfections, be it inclusions or blemishes, after it has been examined with the 10x magnifying glass. One can use higher than 10x magnifier to discover imperfections even in a flawless stone, but traditionally, if an expert can`t see any defects using the 10-power loupe, then they simply don`t exist.
Only expert jewelers, dealers, or gemologists would be able to properly grade the diamonds: inexperienced people would only be able to see lowest grade imperfections, even when using 10-power magnifying glass, and nothing in the highest clarity grades.
When purchasing the diamond ask your expert jeweler to examine the stone at different depths and make sure he only uses 10x magnification as a microscope set at higher magnification can actually hide certain defects in the stone.
How Does Diamond Clarity Affect Its Beauty?
Many people believe that the diamond`s clarity grade can significantly affect the diamond`s brilliance and sparkle. This is totally not true. Except when the stone falls under the lowest grade, the clarity grade of the diamond has no significant effect on the diamond`s appearance. The term clarity contributes to the confusion, as people think that the stone is more brilliant and sparkly because it has better clarity. However, it’s the cutting style and the precision of the cutting that really determines how brilliant or sparkling the diamond is.
The stone`s clarity has little to no effect on the beauty of the stone as long as it falls within the first eight clarity grades. Now, you might be wondering if the clarity grading has any significance at all. The purpose of the clarity grading is to show how clean the stone is, which in its turn will affect the price. Generally, clean diamonds are very rare, and rare diamonds are very pricey. But, your diamond doesn`t have to be flawless to be beautiful, sparkling or brilliant.
When shopping around and comparing diamonds, you will find lots of stones with varying grading. Knowing about the clarity grading gives you the flexibility you need to buy a whiter of larger stone for your price range as long as you can go down with the clarity grading. Just remember that people won`t be able to tell the difference between the diamond clarity grades with a naked eye. Therefore, make sure you like the diamond`s personality, and the brilliance and fire it has, and make sure you know its clarity grade.
Evaluating Diamond Color
When deciding which diamond to buy, the main factor to consider should be diamond color. This is due to the fact that most people would notice the color of your diamond first, before they would consider other factors, such as the diamond’s cut and shape. White or colorless diamonds are the most valued variety. The measure of your diamond’s colorlessness is another most important factor that affects your diamond’s value.
When experts evaluate the diamond’s color, they look into how natural the body of the stone is. Entirely colorless (“white” ) diamonds are the finest and most costly stones. They are often compared to pure spring water. Such stones are very rare and will cost you a lot of money. The majority of diamonds will have traces of either yellowish or brownish tint in them. Stones that come in any other rainbow color are referred to as fancy-colored.
The good news is that colorless diamonds have only slight variations from grade to grade. Once the stone has been mounted, you won’t be able to notice any difference within several grades. That’s why diamonds’ color is always evaluated while it’s not mounted. Jewelers never examine a diamond from its top due to high level of brilliance and fire dispersion. The proper way to examine the diamond is with its table down and the pavilion facing towards the examiner. During the examination the diamond should be placed on a flat white surface for the best observation.
Jewelers grade diamonds on an alphabetical order beginning with the letter D. The rarest grades are D, E, and F, and those are the only ones that are truly colorless diamonds. Diamonds graded with D color are exceptionally rare and are always the most expensive. Diamonds with E color grade are quite rare too and almost identical to the D-color graded diamonds; however, they cost considerably less on a per carat basis than the D-color graded stones, even though you can’t tell the difference.
Diamonds with color grade F are pretty close to E grade, but there is more gradation in color than between grades E and D. The grades G and H are referred to as fine white or rare white. Color grades I and J are classified as near colorless as they have a bit more tint in them, and that’s why you can buy them for less, even though it’s difficult to see any difference. Grades K to M will display stronger tints of yellow or brown, while color grades N to Z show increasingly more shade of yellowish and brownish color.
Remember that stones in lower color grades can still be very beautiful and as desirable as diamonds in higher color grades. Often times extra tinted diamonds display more warmth that’s not available in other stones and can create a uniquely appealing diamond ring.
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