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Loose Diamond Evolution: Then and Today
The beautiful 58 faceted round brilliant diamond which has become synonymous with the slogan, "a woman's best friend", has gone through a lengthy evolution until today.
The first 58 faceted round brilliant diamond was fashioned in the 1650's and early 1700's. As the cut parameters of the diamond evolved into the 1800's, the first "old-miner" and "European cut" diamonds were born. The premise of these diamonds was to sacrifice as little carat weight as possible from the diamond rough, even at the significant expense of the finished diamonds beauty and brilliancy.
In 1860 Henry Morse opened a diamond cutting facility in Boston, MA. His objective was to overhall the traditional old-European cuts by recutting them for increased beauty (more carat weight removed) instead of maximum weigh retention. His finished/polished diamonds were considered the most beautiful of the time.
In 1919 the famous Marcel Tolkowsky’s brilliant diamond cut was introduced together with his acclaimed published thesis on diamond cut. This framework for a diamonds cut parameters became known as the ideal cut diamond standard, by which round diamonds were fashioned into the most ideal cut for maximization of the diamonds beauty and brilliancy.
In the early 1930's Lazare Kaplan began cutting diamonds to the Tolkowsky ideal proportions for ideal cut diamonds.
In 1931 the GIA (Gemological Institute of America) was founded. The GIA and the AGS (American Gemological Society) would carve a niche for themselves in the next 45 years as being the standard bearers of the diamond grading industry and for enabling consumers to select the finest ideal cut diamonds by means of their grading systems.
In 1953, Richard T. Liddicoat developed a unique and novel grading system for diamonds that included a crucial framework for the evaluation of a diamonds cut.
In 1964-66, the AGS developed a 0-10 scale for grading diamond the cut of a loose diamond.
In 1996 the AGS grading Laboratories enters the grading world with a bang by begining to issue a specific cut grade for round brilliant diamonds.
In 2005, the AGS Laboratories introduces the AGS-0 Ideal Princess Cut Diamond. These are the creme-de-la-creme and the finest, most brilliant princess cut diamonds on the market. They also update their brilliance and light performance meauring metrics for the round brilliant diamond.
In 2006 the GIA laboratories jump on the "cut grade" and "light performance" "bandwagon'" by updating their own grading system for round diamonds to reflect and include a measure for the diamonds crucial cut grade.
Grading a loose diamond
Super-Ideal Cut Diamonds
In 1985 a diamond cutter named Kioyishi Higuchi produced the first branded Eightstar diamond for a Japanese businessman named Takanori Tamura using a performance assesment device called the Firescope. The Eightstar diamond was cut for the sole objective of achieving minimum light leakage and maximized diamond brilliance. This is the first "branded" superideal cut diamond that was introduced into the marketplace.
Since the creation of the Firescope, which measures the relationship between light leakage and refracted brilliance in a loose diamond, many scientific diamond evaluation tools were developed. While some of these tools measure the cut precision of a loose diamond, others have the ability to directly measure a diamonds light performance and brilliancy.
In the late 1980's, the first ‘Hearts & Arrows’ diamond was produced in Japan.
In the 1990's Super Ideal cut diamonds began to make waves in America.
The immediate popularity of the super-ideal diamond created the impetus for more refinement and evolution in the diamond technology sector for qualifying and quantifying a loose diamonds cut precision and visual beauty.
Today, in 2007, the most visually stunning and absolutely brilliant diamond that money could buy, is knows as the super-ideal cut diamond.
For more information on what exactly distinguishes the super-ideal cut diamonds from even the typically beautiful (albeit, less precise) ideal cut diamonds, click here.
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