Nov 27 2023 - Cutting Down to Size

 

Cutting diamonds has been a secretive activity.  The King's Diamond was cut in a secret location in Amterdam in 1908.  It is one of the Cullinan diamonds and was part of the crown jewels. The Cullinan Diamond is very famous - it is the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever discovered. The rough stone weighed 3100 carats. Cullinan was the owner of the mine. The stone was so large that the original miner who found it thought it was a practical joke of a large piece of glass hammered in by colleagues.  Turning a rough stone into a diamond starts with the "splitting operation." It sounds medical. It took place in the presence of several experts and a small number of privileged persons in the trade, who have obtained special permission from the authorities in London. That was 1908. Hard thinking and studying went into the time between when the "firm" received the great diamond and the cutting activity.   From the 1908 account: "The first problem that Mr. Joseph Asscher, the head of the firm, had to solve was how to cut the diamond so as to eliminate some very bad spots existing in it. For this purpose, a special model of the diamond in clay was made. On this model has been concentrated the attention of the firm. It was cut into pieces to give an idea of what would happen if the genuine stone were treated in the same way." Below are two pictures - the first is the original Cullinan diamond and the second shows the nine major diamonds that resulted from the cutting of the Cullinan Diamond; the largest two stones, the Cullinan I and Cullinan II (considered siblings), are now set in the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross and the Imperial State Crown. These featured in the coronation of King Charles III.   There is so much legend in precious stones.  And there is much scientific exploration that takes place to understand how and where they are formed.  There are metals in tiny pockets of diamonds that provide chemical clues to how the diamonds were formed and how deep below the surface.  The Cullinan mine diamonds were some of the deepest. It makes me appreciate the mystical quality of gemstones.  I hadn't thought about the complexity of creating the diamond jewel and all the intrigues and adventures that went along with something so valuable. There's my own version of diamonds - little ice crystals at TBG one winter.

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Nov 26 2023 - Diamonds Everywhere Now

 

Spence Diamonds have ads on all our radio stations.  Plasma Diamonds.  They say that there's an oversupply of diamonds due to the pandemic  - there weren't many engagements and not many weddings. So buy your diamonds now and get more for your money with plasma diamonds. Plasma diamonds are now acceptable, in fact, they are advertised as preferable - they are mining-free.  They are the same chemically, structurally and optically as mined diamonds.  There are two methods of making them -  HPHT (High Pressure High Temperature) method or the CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) method. They are created from tiny carbon seeds of pre-existing diamonds. Scientists use advanced technology – either extreme pressure and heat (HPHT) or a special deposition process known as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) – to mimic the method of natural diamond formation. Over the course of six to ten weeks, a rough diamond is formed.  HPHT method is considered to more closely resemble real diamond creation. There are many applications for diamonds besides the decorative gemstones  - machining and cutting tools, optical materials, electronics.   But the gemstone seems most compelling - one can have various colours of diamond now in various shapes.  This is revolutionary.   Can a diamond really be any colour, any shape and any size? What about things like the Hope Diamond which has boron in it that causes the blue colour?  It is a "diamond lattice:" and is not reproduceable in the lab.   What about size? The most famous diamond besides Hope is the Mountain of Light - Koh-i-Noor.  It is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world ay 105.60 carats.  This diamond is currently in the Royal Crown of the Queen and in London.  The largest plasma diamond meant for gemstones is 6.28 carats. There are larger plasma diamonds at 155 carats but they are not for gemstone use.  We love sparkly things.  Whether it is gemstones or ice crystals.  I am sure the fascination with diamonds will grow with the increase in availability rather than diminish.  That's my theory  based on our love of sparkly things.  Today's picture is a pretty crystal pattern in ice.

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Sep 6 2022 - Tiffany time in the lab

 

Jewellery ads on our radio stations advertise lab grown diamonds.  This sounds interesting and exotic.  Things "grown" in labs. They used to be known as synthetic diamonds. They are created in a laboratory environment. These diamonds can be a more ethical choice than natural diamonds, as mining is not needed to produce them.   Here's what the BBC had to say in their article on lab-made diamonds: "On a grey January morning in 2019 Meghan Markle emerged onto a London street on her way to a meeting. She wore a smart coat and heels, but it was not her clothing that caught the attention of the world. It was a pair of glittering drop earrings embedded with diamonds that had been grown in a lab.  It took just five days to grow the diamonds adorning Markle’s ears according to Sidney Neuhaus, co-founder of Kimaï, the company that made them. Based in Antwerp." A lab-grown diamond is a diamond: chemically, physically and optically identical to a mined diamond.  There are two ways to grow a diamond. Both involve starting with the “seed” (a flat slither) of another diamond. The first lab diamond was made using a High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) system, where the seed is then placed amidst some pure graphite carbon and exposed to temperatures of about 1,500C and pressurised to approximately 1.5 million pounds per square inch in a chamber. More recently, another way to grow a diamond was discovered, called Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). This involves putting the seed in a sealed chamber filled with carbon-rich gas and heating to around 800C. Under these conditions the gases begin to “stick” to the seed, growing a diamond carbon atom by atom. The article goes on to demonstrate how mined diamonds are unethical making lab-grown diamonds a likely better choice.  So did the comics and Superman making a diamond out of a lump of coal foretell that lab-grown diamonds would happen?   I look this up and have to be reminded that neither process for forming natural diamonds nor synthetic diamonds uses coal.  Diamonds created in laboratories are formed using graphite.  Here's the conclusion:  " If you hand Superman a stocking full of coal, best case scenario, he can make some real low-grade diamonds that really aren’t gonna fetch you much. A more realistic outcome is that he’s gonna hand you back a fistful of black powder. The good news is if you have an aunt or a grandma that gave you a pack of pencils for Christmas, now we’re in business."

And definitely ice crystals will not result in diamonds in the lab.  These ones looked wonderful to me, inspiring the title of the image Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Diamond Time

Michael's sent me its first Fall Decor email.  We did not get out of the first week of August for the Back to School and Fall promotions. For some reason I wondered about the biggest diamond and what it is. The biggest diamond in the world is the Cullinan diamond - it is 3,106 carats and 1.3 pounds.  It was found in 1905 in the Premier Mine (now Cullinan Diamond Mine) in Pretoria South Africa by Thomas Evan Powell.  Today it is located in London and is on the head of England's royal Sceptre.  It is in the picture of Queen Elizabeth at her coronation.  You saw that a few days ago. This largest diamond became nine major stones and 96 smaller diamonds that were cut from it.  The Lesser Star of Africa is known as Cullinan II is part of the British crown jewels' Imperial State Crown.  These precious stones live in the Tower of London.  You can find out about Cullinan Mine diamonds - there are eight legends - HERE.  One of those stones is the Taylor-Burton Diamond given by Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor for her 40th birthday. The top 10 diamonds in the world are listed in this article HERE. The Cullinan shows up as number 3 worth 337 million euros.  At position 2 is The Sancy - considered priceless in that the diamond is so rare and expensive that an exact value is not known, and finally Koh-i-Noor - the finest white diamond discovered in 1294.  It means "mountain of light" in Persian and was 'confiscated' by the British East India Company and now the property of the British Crown.  The possible value is over 1 billion euro - that's almost 1.5 billion Canadian dollars. De Beers began a marketing campaign in 1938 that caused the diamond engagement ring craze. So diamonds have been popular ever since. The most diamonds set into one ring?  It would be 7,777 in India on May 7, 2019. It is the "Lotus Ring".  How about the biggest bling ever:  a $500,000 watch with 15,000 diamonds.  That's another Guinness record. In 2018, a Coca-Cola bottle-shaped handbag was covered with 9,888 diamonds.  It has the record for most diamonds set on a handbag.  And there is a Gibson guitar with 11,441 diamonds.  There are pages and pages of diamond jokes.  Here's an excellent example: A lady enters a jeweller's and says "You sold my husband a diamond ring yesterday but it's the wrong size". "No problem madam, we can adjust the finger size easily". "Oh, you don't understand, you sold him a one carat size, and I take a five carat size".

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