Janus Thinking

This month’s Smithsonian Magazine provides a look into the current status of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamonds, synthetic diamonds which are grown in a lab and have shown a marked increase in quality over the past few years. Apollo Diamond, an American company based in Boston, is currently the market leader.

Seeking an unbiased assessment of the quality of these laboratory diamonds, I asked Bryant Linares to let me borrow an Apollo stone. The next day, I place the .38 carat, princess-cut stone in front of Virgil Ghita in Ghita’s narrow jewelry store in downtown Boston. With a pair of tweezers, he brings the diamond up to his right eye and studies it with a jeweler’s loupe, slowly turning the gem in the mote-filled afternoon sun. "Nice stone, excellent color. I don’t see any imperfections," he says. "Where did you get it?"

"It was grown in a lab about 20 miles from here," I reply.

He lowers the loupe and looks at me for a moment. Then he studies the stone again, pursing his brow. He sighs. "There’s no way to tell that it’s lab-created."

These synthetics are an interesting development–they currently cost about as much as regular diamonds, but like all manufactured goods, prices are expected to decrease. These diamonds may be able to be used for greater engineering and computing purposes (perhaps used like silicon, the article suggests). As for how these synthetics fit with the “traditional” purpose of a diamond, the representation of love between two people, I’m not yet sure. Certainly there’s something to be said for a natural stone being forged of carbon over billions of years, that time representing the everlasting love between the diamond’s giver and recipient.

But at the same time, some might interpret these synthetic or “cultured” diamonds as something to be desired in themselves–a new feat of technology, in a way to be absolutely certain (in spite of increasingly strong regulation) that no one was harmed in the production of the diamond. If people interpret luxury in this way, then it’s a good thing that they have this new cultured option.

[via Boing Boing]

Recently I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times archive from 1912: "The Etiquette of Jewels: The Woman Who Takes Care Not to Wear Them for Mere Garish Display Can Add Much to Her Appearance." It describes how diamonds and other jewels can enhance a woman’s "natural loveliness."

It’s interesting to observe the rather ham-handed way that women are portrayed in the article by today’s standards. While the author makes a point that it’s important to pay attention to proportion and harmony when choosing jewels, he also notes how women should be acutely aware of their imperfections, rather than comfortable with their natural beauty "for where a woman fails to mentally admit her own shortcomings, she is more apt to emphasize them to others." She instead needs "the calm calculation of a soldier planning a battle, thus intelligently facing the difficulties to be dealt with."

Women need to wear not necessarily what they like and what gives them the most pleasure, but rather items that are the "most correct" for, and I quote, "her height, the contour of her face, her age, (or rather, to express it in the modern phrasing, her dignity,) the definite proportion of each feature, and her hands and arms." The article goes on to describe which stones go best with which complexions and hair colors (because heaven forbid, you wouldn’t want to produce "an unpleasing, gypsy likeness."

While this advice is questionable at best, there is one bit at the end that rings true to me:

The appeal of jewels, however much may be said to the contrary, is not a woman’s vanity, but to her love of the beautiful.

Women must choose diamonds and other jewelry that they interpret as truly beautiful, diamonds that makes them feel alive and truly unique. There is no automatic process to determine the "most correct" diamond for someone; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Photo by Crystl

One for the Doh! file: Lefkos Hajji, a floor-fitter in London, recently chose a novel way to ask his girlfriend to marry him: she would literally pop the question, popping a balloon to find a diamond engagement ring inside. Seemed like a great idea until a gust of wind swept away the £6000 ($12,000) ring as Hajji left the florist where got the balloon. He searched for two hours but had no luck finding the balloon or the ring. And his girlfriend was unimpressed, refusing to speak to him until he gets another ring. Was he unlucky? Stupid? Romantic? It was a lovely expression of love, but perhaps he should try something a bit more conventional with his next ring.

[via Reuters and The Sun]

Photo by Armel*

With uncertainty facing the economy around the world, it’s difficult to forecast where diamond prices will go in the near (and far) future. On Friday Rapaport issued a warning that speculative prices for large diamonds may not be sustainable because of a lack of interdealer demand. On the very same day, Mining Weekly reported that "there is no reason for the markets to soften" and prices would continue to increase, especially in the rare and larger diamond section of the market. Who will prove correct? All we can say for certain is that the outlook for diamond prices is uncertain.

Photo by mafic

Moti Ganz, the chairman of the Israel Diamond Institute, gave an interesting speech last week at the Third International Rough Diamond Conference in Tel Aviv. Speaking on the topic of producer strategies, Ganz argued that there is too much polished diamond on the market because manufacturers are polishing when they don’t have customers lined up to buy the stones.

Ganz asked rough producers to refrain from the use of tenders and auctions as a way to unload rough, saying they hurt manufacturers and the producers themselves in the long run. He also called for rough producers to help promote diamonds as a luxury product in the manner of De Beers, who spend 3% of sales turnover on advertising. His reasoning:

In the long-run this investment will be repaid, as the awareness of diamonds increases in the consumer market. The diamond is not a simple luxury product. It is not a bag – you buy it one week, and next year when it goes out of fashion, you buy another one. Women give bags that are out of fashion to their housekeepers. I have never heard of a woman who gave her diamond jewelry to a housekeeper. They pass on diamond jewelry to their daughters and granddaughters or set them in new jewelry. The diamond never wears out in their eyes. Therefore, the investment in marketing must be more sophisticated than that of other luxury items.

I agree–diamonds get passed on and the love they represent only grows with time. But should the responsibility to promote diamonds fall higher on the supply chain? I think Ganz might be on to something, if a new marketing effort from rough producers is done in a coordinated way.

Read Ganz’s speech here, and an A-DX.net piece about it here.

Sightholder status from the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) is bestowed the world’s top diamantaires (as chosen by the DTC) for “their ability to market diamonds effectively and distribute them efficiently.” DTC Sightholders get access to rough diamond supplies, and in return “deliver specified diamonds in predictable quantities, assure the quality and integrity of their diamonds, and provide value-added marketing support.” (Both quotes from the DTC’s site here)

Recently, six companies lost their DTC Sightholder status following the result a criminal case in Antwerp. On December 6, 2007, the Antwerp Correctional Court convicted these diamantaires (and seven others) of fraud, fictitious invoicing and smuggling between 1994 -1999.

The judges refused to approve a settlement between the Belgian prosecution and the thirteen diamantaires, and gave the companies a six months suspended jail sentence. The DTC is also suspending these companies’ diamond supplies.

This editorial, “The Genie is out of the Bottle,” by Chaim Even-Zohar, makes an interesting argument that it wasn’t so much fraud as industry practice at the time that these (relatively small) companies were doing–they were actually increasing their taxable income by moving values that were ‘hidden in inventories’ to actual revenues, which the law now makes companies do. Their conviction is merely for show when larger companies with greater transgressions at the time were not targeted in the lawsuit. In any case, Even-Zohar believes the decision will accelerate growth of transparency, good governance, and Best Practice Principles in the diamond industry. Do you agree?

The unique Rainbow Collection of 300 coloured diamonds is to be showcased by International Diamond Laboratories at the Dubai International Jewellery Week in December 2007.

The collection is thought to be the largest of its kind in the world and consists of blue, cognac, orange, purple, and yellow diamonds thought to exceed $100 million in value. The Rainbow Collection is owned by Eddy Elzas, who began his career as a diamond cleaver before progressing into brokering and eventually becoming recognised as the leading industry expert on coloured diamonds.

The showcasing of the collection at the Dubai World Trade Centre will be accompanied by a talk on the subject by Elzas, which is likely to cement the growing popularity of coloured diamonds, particularly in the Gulf market.

One for the ‘too-good-to-be-true’ file: several weeks ago we mentioned the discovery of an unpolished diamond in the North-West Province of South Africa that was said to be twice the size of the Cullinan diamond. Turns out it’s a hoax: The UK’s Guardian reports that Brett Jolly, a British property developer, was apparently duped by former business colleagues who were trying to get him to buy the land where the ‘diamond’ was found. Upon Jolly’s arrival at the mine, they produced something that was clearly plastic and didn’t or wouldn’t use the testing machine properly on this ‘diamond’ to accurately test it. Shame.

In actual diamond news, Sotheby’s recently held an auction in Hong Kong that sold a 6.04 carat internally flawless ‘fancy vivid blue’ diamond for $7.98 million. That’s a price of $1.32 million per carat, about 10 times the amount that white diamonds of this caliber would sell for, and well above the previous record set by ‘Hancock Red,’ a red diamond that sold for $926,000 per carat 20 years ago.

The Diamond Vues blog notes that Sotheby’s is also going to auction off a nearly perfect 84.37 carat white diamond on November 14 in Geneva. It’s expected to fetch $15 million.

And so demand for exceptional diamonds continues to rise.

Would you pay a million dollars to own a diamond that was created from Ludwig van Beethoven’s DNA? The proposition using of DNA as the basis for unique gems is currently being tested by a company called LifeGem, who have taken 10 strands of Beethoven’s hair to create three small (.56 carat) round brilliant cut diamonds. From those 10 strands they extracted 130 milligrams of carbon, and used that in three separate diamond presses to make the diamonds.

One diamond is going to LifeGem’s ‘Chain of Fame’ (they hope to create a series of diamonds from famous DNA), the second is going to the man who donated the hair, and the third is currently being auctioned on eBay–four days left, with a buy-it-now price of $1 million.

Is creating a diamond from DNA a respectful way to create something truly unique, personal and priceless: a great way to remember and celebrate people important to us, living or dead? Or is it gaudy, crass and unnatural, playing on people’s emotions and ‘unreal’ because it was created in a lab and not over billions of years in nature?

LifeGem expects this to be the first of many ‘celebrity’ diamonds–whether there’s public demand for them will be suggested by the results of the auction.

[via the UK Telegraph]

Today the UK’s Guardian reported that a new diamond has been found in South Africa that is believed to be twice the size of the Cullinan diamond, the second-largest cut diamond in the world.

The Cullinan diamond is 530.2 carats (polished from a rough stone weighing 3,106.75 carats).

The details of this new diamond are still scarce–we don’t know which mine or mining company found the diamond and while the size has been revealed other important characteristics (such as whether it’s colorless) are unknown. The rough diamond also still needs to be cut–this provides a fantastic opportunity (or dilemma) for the polisher, who needs to decide which features to highlight in the diamond to maximize its brilliance, scintillation, fire while also not shaving off carats unnecessarily. The full text of the article is here.