The Hogback

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

In the mid-sixteenth century only three types of diamond cut were actually given names: the Point Cut, the Table Cut, the Hogback, and the Dos ďâne. This last was the term used in the Renaissance to describe long, narrow diamonds which had two main sloping facets in the crown meeting at an acute angle in a horizontal ridge, and two similar facets in the pavilion. All four facets terminated at either end in smaller facets. In regular Hogbacks the girdle was rectangular.

The rough crystal was usually a distorted, elongated octahedron with two pairs of long faces, one pair above and one pair below. The shape could have emerged simply through unequal face development, or it may have been the result of a natural cleavage, or the cutter may have cleaved off segments from a normal octahedron, or split it twice.

Hogbacks served many purposes: as ‘petals’ of Rosettes, as arms of crosses, as strokes of letters in ‘IHS’ pendants, and so on. The pavilion was often given four facets and a culet, as in a Table Cut, and the ridge of the crown could also be flattened into a narrow Table facet. In fact, the Hogback eventually developed into a long narrower Table Cut.