More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones

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:

Most people know that diamonds can be white, yellow or blue white, and that blue white stones are considered to be the best, also that off-colored or yellow stones are the least esteemed.

What the average person does not realize is that diamonds may be of any color or tint, from coal-black to emerald green or rose-pink. Their coloring is due to various metallic oxides. When, therefore, diamonds are for some time exposed to high temperatures, their color is apt to change, though only temporarily. An experiment with diamond, probably the first of its kind, was carried out by Sir William Crookes, who embedded a pale-yellow diamond in radium bromide for eleven weeks. At the end of that time, the pale yellow had changed into a bluish green.

I myself saw and handled an eight carat stone which, by the same means, had been turned from brown into a poor tourmaline-green. In my opinion the stone had been utterly spoilt by the treatment, for not only had its market value not improved, but it looked a most uninteresting stone. Whether the color was permanent, no one, of course, was in a position to judge. The stone might either gradually drift back to its original color or change suddenly and unpredictably. In either case the buyer was due for an unpleasant surprise. If anyone asked my advice about such a stone I should certainly tell him not to buy, whatever the price and however attractive the new color might be, for the radioactivity to which it had been exposed is still an unknown quantity, and no one could tell what bio-chemical changes it might bring about in the body of the wearer, detrimental to his or her health. And if to wear a radium-treated stone exposes the wearer to unknown dangers, the purveyor likewise risks being mulcted of heavy damages.

Lovers of diamonds, however, need not have much fear of buying a radium-treated stone unawares, for such experiments are rare and costly and only carried out to satisfy the curiosity of savants. Likewise, the diamond-wearing classes may also calmly rejoice in their possessions without worrying much about laboratory-made diamonds, lest overnight some experimenter should make diamonds two a penny. Diamond crystals of microscopic size have, indeed, been produced in the laboratory crucible, but their cost of production stood in inverse ratio to their dimensions, which goes to prove that a laboratory success can be at the same time a financial disaster.

Not so many years ago, and not long enough ago for those of my generation to have forgotten the incident, a rogue of a French chemist managed to extract a considerable sum of money from the diamond-making process; but not by making genuine diamonds, merely by ‘telling the tale’ to a great diamond magnate and coaxing the shekels from his well-buttoned pocket.

The Frenchman claimed that he could produce good sized diamonds in the laboratory. With unerring psychological insight he approached a man already so rich that a further accretion of wealth could cause him no thrill. Such a man could be touched by only one appeal—the threat of losing what he already had. All his money was in diamonds. He was thus an easier mark than you or I would have been, and a little sleight of hand did the rest. It was money for jam until the magnate chose to test the process for himself. Then he brought the cheat into court and the whole diamond trade rocked with laughter. If I had been that magnate I should have bought the impostor’s silence for a large sum.

I wonder how many of those fortunate people who can afford to wear diamonds know how many facets there are in a brilliant, and how those facets are distributed? Not a great many, I expect, for most people are not particularly observant in small matters (or even in large ones, often).

Even the average dealer in gems and professional jeweler, who might be able to answer unhesitatingly and correctly that there are in all fifty eight facets in a full cut standard representative brilliant, might not be able to give the technical names of them. Now, if you look at a brilliant carefully, you will see that the stone is divided by the girdle into two parts, top and bottom. The girdle is that part which impinges upon the metal setting. The top is, of course, that portion of the stone which is visible in a piece of jewelry and the bottom that which is hidden in wear.

The most prominent facet is the flat surface on top called the table. Grouped around it are the eight star facets, four bezels, four lozenges, eight cross and eight skill facets. These facets, thirty three in all, account for the light reflecting surfaces placed at different angles in the top part of a representative diamond. There are, of course, other methods of cutting, both old and new, but that subject demands half a dozen chapters to itself, and would probably not interest the layman anyway. Enough to add that the underside of a diamond cut like the above has fewer facets than the top, twenty five to be exact. Their respective names and numbers are: the culet (that part which opposed to the table), four pavilion facets, four quoins, eight cross, and eight skill facets.

More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones (continued)