Stellar Cuts

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

The Stellar Cut Brilliant was no innovation. The culet facets were initially copied from octraheroid crystals with dissoluted corners and occasionally applied also on Table Cuts. A number of large and even some quite small Brilliants, dating from the middle of the seventeenth century, have a star-like arrangement of small facets round the culet. I call these ‘culet facets’ in line with the term ‘girdle facets’. To describe this type of cut as the Stellar Cuts avoids confusion with the established terms Star Cut and ‘star facets’, and eliminates cumbersome descriptions such as ‘with eight facets surrounding the culet’.