Diamonds: black, white and all colours in between

I absolutely refuse to blather on about the 4 Cs grading of diamonds as it has cropped up in every article ever written on them. All diamonds are made from carbon and are formed some 100 or more miles below the earth’s crust. Heat (up to 1300 °C) and pressure (up to 60 Kb) form the crystal which then erupts to the earth’s surface during volcanic activity via kimberlite tubes. They are mined mainly in Africa and latterly in Canada, Brazil, Russia, India and Australia. The “youngest” of these diamond crystals were probably formed a million years ago, but no one can put a time on when older crystals were first created.

Black diamonds are strange creatures. They are a load of very small diamonds all squashed up together instead of being a single crystal. In a white diamond, light enters the stone, bounces around and exits giving the stone its sparkle. Black diamonds, however, because of all the many angles and facets of its multi-crystalline structure, just gobble the light up and look black. No one is exactly sure as to how these were formed, or why! Opinions vary from radiation induced formation to extra terrestrial origin formed during a super nova explosion prior to the birth of our solar system. Quite!

They are also being manufactured by taking a clear diamond and using radiation techniques to give a black colour, obviously driven by market forces! You may have guessed I am no great fan of black diamonds, but I have worked with them and my customers, although they laugh at me, have been pleased with the jewellery created for them.

Other coloured diamonds, called fancies, are very rare and very expensive. A 3.5ct red diamond was auctioned at Christies in New York with an estimate of $3.15 million. There are currently only three reds over 5ct known in the world. Pink and red diamonds are mined at the Argyle mines in Australia. Pinks can be quite beautiful, but only a handful, literally, of stones weighing half a carat or more are mined every year. This makes the Graff pink diamond a whopper at 24.78ct.

Yellow or canary diamonds are more common, one of the most famous being the Tiffany diamond. In the rough it weighed 287ct and, when cut by Mr. Kunz of kunzite fame, it weighed 128ct.

Of the blue diamonds, the most renowned is the supposedly cursed Hope diamond weighing in at 45.52ct.

And the 4Cs:
Carat - 5ct to a gram, 100 points to a carat, word originates from carob seeds.
Cut - myriad ways to facet a stone.
Clarity - degree of impurities and faults within a stone.
Colour - E, F, and G - colourless, and so on through the alphabet getting yellower and
browner.

Oops, sorry!

If you want any more information or are planning any jewellery purchase, please call me or visit the website.

StrawberryWood
0800 917 8684
P.O. Box 7491, Kettering, N16 6HU
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www.strawberrywood.co.uk 

Strawberrywood

StrawberryWood