Caire’s Theory Of The Gradual Evolution Of The Brilliant Cut

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

For about two hundred years now, people writing about diamonds have been speculating about how the Brilliant Cut came into being. None of the writers of the eighteenth century, not even Jeffries (1750) or Dutens (1776), concerned themselves with the historical aspects of the diamond industry. In fact, Caire, the Paris jeweler, appears to have been the first person to take an interest in how cuts developed.

He began by studying Jeffries’ sequence for the faceting of a Brilliant. In this, the rough pyramidal crystal was first symmetrized and lowered in height and then bruted into the shape of an old Table Cut with four crown facets. These were split into eight and then into sixteen facets before the stone was finally ‘brillianteered’. Caire suggested that what he called the Single Cut was achieved by slicing off the corners of the Table Cut, and the Double Cut by splitting the resultant eight facets.

Obviously he had to substantiate this theory by illustrating the sequence. As actual specimens did not exist, he selected the nearest thing he could find, four poorly fashioned Indian Cut diamonds from among stone imported simply as raw material to be fashioned into Brilliants. However, his examples were unconvincing, so he produced names of ‘inventors’ for two phases: Cardinal Mazarin for the Double Cut and purely fictitious character, Peruzzi, for the Brilliant Cut itself. In his revised edition of Bauer’s Edelsteinkunde (1932), the gem expert Schlossmacher unwisely reiterated Caire’s ideas and supplemented them with sketches of his version of the Peruzzi design. Caire’s theories were accepted as gospel and are still considered so by many people.

Not, however, Tom Brunés, who believed that ancient cabalistic geometry was the origin of the design of the Square Brilliant. In his monograph The Secrets of Ancient Geometry, he reproduced a diagram of a symbol that was already accepted several thousand years ago: a circle with a square, with two inverted triangles. To this, two more triangles were added. When the circle is removed, we are left with an eight-pointed star, a symbol widely used in architecture, especially in ancient temples, mosaic floors, stained glass windows, etc. It is in this star within a square that we can really see where the basic pattern of a Square Brilliant originated. A few more points are joined, a few more parallels ruled, and there we have the completed design of the Peruzzi Cut! As in ancient geometry, no measuring device is needed.