The Pointed Star Cut

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

This Point Cut is an important and almost forgotten diamond cut dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its faceting design was eventually transferred to the faceting of pavilions of Brilliant Cuts and small complementary diamonds. The pattern was no doubt originally inspired by a natural crystal with a very similar distribution of faces—the hexoctahedron. But the basically octahedral faces of this crystal are in such low relief that cleaved-off slices had no appeal in their natural state and were usually faceted into a trihedral design instead. The cut can be described as being pavilion-based, with a crown with eight lozenges radiating from an elevated central point, and eight small upper girdle facets between the main facets. The pavilion was sometimes faceted in the same way, though it often had fewer facets.

One of the four-face points of the dodecahedron became the apex of the gem; the crystal’s ‘equator’ became the girdle, and the stone was then symmetrized above and below by applying facets to the four main edges and thus creating eight main facets. Girdle facets were applied as well. If for any reason it proved necessary to reduce the depths of the pavilion, this was usually left with four facets and a culet. One occasionally comes across a Pointed Star Cut with six-part symmetry. These were either developments of the Burgundian Point Cut or had been fashioned directly from dodecahedral rough with one of the three-face apexes facing the viewer.

Conventional representations of celestial bodies were often used as symbols of rank and authority, and this is one reason why important Star Cut diamonds are occasionally found in portraits of kings and queens. But another reason for the popularity of this cut was that, if the gem was fashioned from a perfectly formed dodecahedron, it was possible to retain far greater weight with this style than with a Table Cut. However, Pointed Star Cuts never became really common—the Burgundian Point Cut, made from the same type of rough, remained the fashionable cut along with the Pyramidal Point Cut and the various Table Cuts that still dominate the market.