I Break Three Times Into Diamonds

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

What is this diamond, this substance of great price, in which so much capital is sunk and which has captured the imagination of the world? Every schoolboy knows that chemically it is pure carbon, like graphite, or black lead, and charcoal. It is the crystalline form of carbon produced at great pressures and high temperatures in the bowels of the earth. But a diamond crystal in the rough, before it is faceted and polished, is not attractive unless you know its cash value.

Apart from being practically the hardest substance known, topping the scale with the number 10—one degree harder than sapphire—diamond is also the most imperishable of all substances and the most lustrous when cut and polished. And yet it was almost unknown in Europe until comparatively recent times. The Greeks had an ‘adamas’, or diamond, literally ‘the invincible substance’. But it was a name they applied to anything very hard, some metals, for instance, or the emery stone, and the first specific reference to the diamond as the adamas is encountered in the writings of Manilius ( A.D. 16), who speaks of it as being more valuable than gold.

Eighty years later Pliny the naturalist speaks of diamond as being the most valuable gem known. He names several varieties, but only one, coming from India, can have been a true diamond. India, indeed, as far as we can tell, was the principal ancient source of diamonds, and even India did not produce many. Pliny’s ‘diamonds’ from Macedonia, Arabia, and Cyprus were almost certainly nothing of the kind.

Students of the Scriptures will be thinking of the High Priest’s breastplate (about which I had dreamed such a daring dream as a child). For diamonds are mentioned as having been one of the twelve precious stones with which it was set: the third stone in the second row, to be precise. And ‘diamond’ is certainly the correct translation of the Hebrew ‘yahalum’. But at that remote time there was no known method of engraving on diamond, and even today, with all the modern tools and methods at the disposal of the craftsman, the task is a most difficult one; yet upon the ‘diamond’ in the breastplate was engraved the name of one of the Hebrew tribes. That alone shows that the scriptural ‘diamond’ was not a diamond, unless you insist that many an art known to the ancients has had to be rediscovered in a later age which thinks itself more advanced.

All diamonds are extremely hard, but all diamonds are not of equal hardness. Those that come from Borneo, for instance, are somewhat harder than those found in Brazil or South Africa. The Australian diamond, too, is harder than the South African product. I remember well, many years ago, an Antwerp diamond cutter’s perplexity when having purchased a small parcel of rough diamond he and his men found they could make no headway with them. Why? Because the powdered diamond, the boart, they were using in the process of cutting and polishing, was of South African origin, whereas that parcel of rough stones came from Australia. Australian boart had to be procured before the work could proceed, and the diamond cutter was furious with the London dealer who had sold him the goods. He would indeed have brought an action against him, but the quarrel was composed by mutual friends. He had a real grievance, too, for Australia was then not generally known as a source of diamonds. But those who regularly handled Australian brut (rough diamonds) were fully aware of the difference in hardness, and consequently knew that any diamond cutter ignorant of the fact would be ‘up against it’.

Actually, although there is no natural substance harder than diamond, there have been produced certain alloys of tantalum which not only compete for wearing qualities with the hardest of all stones, but are even harder than diamond. Amongst the many opportunities to become rich that I have let slip through my fingers I must count the chance I once had to clean up a fortune out of tantalum.

I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)