The Trihedrally Faceted Diamond Point

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

Additional faceting was not necessarily a sign of increasing skill or experience on the part of the cutters, but was forced on them by the irregularities of the rough. One of these, the trisoctahedron, is rarely, if ever, fully developed in the natural rough, but many octahdedrons have one or two faces shaped according to the trisoctahedral distribution of faces; others again have a ‘hexoctahedral design’. Both these types were imitated by very early cutters.

There are in the literature very few examples of trihedral faceting of Point Cuts, and I have found only two: ‘a cutt with diverse triangles’ in the 1587 inventory of the jewels belonging to Queen Elizabeth I of England, and ‘ein facet Steinen pointe mit dray Facetten ab jeder Seit’ in a Prussian document dated 1677, to do with the Orange inheritance. Several Point Cuts of this type have been illustrated, but with no comment on the additional faceting. Two perfectly square trisoctahedrally faceted Point Cut diamonds in pendants from the collection of Duchess Anna of Bavaria were painted by Hans Mielich.