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Cutting Diamonds
Diamond wedding rings have been popular for generations, but long before most women received a diamond on their wedding day, these beautiful stones were embedded in the finest and most elaborate pieces of jewellery. There are several outstanding examples in the Crown Jewels. The great 105 carat Koh-i-Noor (Mountain of Light) diamond was presented to Queen Victoria when she became Empress of India in the 19th Century and has been one of Britain’s greatest treasures ever since.
However, the Koh-i-Noor viewers of the Crown Jewels see today isn’t quite as it was when presented. In fact, it is much smaller. It used to weigh in at 186 carats. Back then, cutting loose diamonds was much more difficult than it is today and as a result the Koh-i-Noor’s original cut was quite crude by modern standards and certainly didn’t show off this magnificent stone as well as possible. Queen Victoria had it re-cut in Amsterdam in 1852, seeking to improve the brilliance and general appearance of this fine diamond.
Because diamonds are so hard, cutting them has always been a very tricky process. Until the development of laser cutting tools the only way to cut a diamond was with another one. The difficulties faced by early diamond jewellers can easily be imagined. As early as the 14th Century, jewellers began to get to grips with it and the familiar forms of each type of diamond cut started to emerge quite quickly. Fine jewellers quickly realised that waste could be minimised by splitting the normal crystalline form of a diamond into two and making each half into a gem of a very particular shape.
They also noticed that the number of facets and the way the facets were arranged had a marked impact on the brilliance, lustre, and sparkle of the finished product. There was far more to the art than creating a pretty, symmetrical shape using as much of the original diamond as possible. The science of diamond cutting was born.
Today the physics behind it is well understood. We know that each facet reflects a portion of the light that lands on it, and the rest is refracted into the body of the stone. If the facets are arranged to gather refracted light to a single point they will sparkle like nothing else on earth. Scientists have discovered and written down the laws that govern the optical properties of diamonds and other precious stones and we can now use computers to predict the qualities of a particular diamond shape.
The advent of lasers made the diamond cutting process much easier, although it is only just beginning to be adopted worldwide and many cutters still use traditional methods. A powerful laser cutting tool can handle diamond with no problems and what’s more, the cuts achievable this way are much more precise than those that can be produced with conventional blades. Fancy cuts are easy and the entire process can be handled by a computer with very little human intervention.
Diamond cuts have evolved from crude and simple blocks to a stunning array of fancy shapes and beautifully scientific, perfectly symmetrical forms. Whether you choose the best cut for sparkle, lustre, or just a meaningful shape, you will be getting the very pinnacle of 600 years of development in the diamond cutting industry.
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