ABOUT DIAMONDS

MARCH10 Cullinan Heritage Diamond sells for US$35.3m

Petra Diamonds announced over the weekend that the 507-carat Cullinan Heritage
was sold for US$35.3 million, the highest sale price on record ever achieved for
a rough diamond......>> 
   

JAN.10  Petra Diamonds Ltd, the international diamond mining group, has announced the
recovery of a spectacular 507.55-carat white diamond at the Cullinan mine in South Africa.
The diamond was recovered in the same production run along with three other special
white stones of similar colour and clarity – a large diamond of carats and two other
diamonds of 58.5 carats and 53.3 carats 
   
The 507-carat diamond, which has yet to be named, is considered to be among the top 20
largest high-quality rough diamonds ever found worldwide and ranks alongside other
illustrious diamonds recovered at the celebrated Cullinan mine.
Cullinan has a special place in the history of diamonds as the source of the world’s largest
diamond ever recovered, the Cullinan, at 3,106 carats rough.

                                                        The Diamond 

JAN.10 ADAMAS or DIAMOND. It is certain that diamonds were well known in Europe centuries a go, it is described as extremely hard, colourless and resident to fire, ADAMAS literally means untameable or else indestructible.Diamonds are the most prestigious of all gems; diamonds bring glamour, sophistication and class.

 But diamonds are so rare in nature they don't come cheap.It has that unique combination of life and brilliance and class, it really makes you feel special when you're looking at it.

Extracted from the deepness of the earth it becomes, after a careful and experienced procedure, the quintessence of brilliancy and prestige: the gem that we all appreciate. Only minimal parts of the diamonds found are used in the jewellery business.

This rarity is the first reason for their very high value. It's believed that diamonds are created two hundred kilometres beneath the earth's surface, and that they can take millions or even billions of years to form.

Then during rare and exceptionally violent volcanic eruptions diamonds are blasted to the surface within a rock called kimberlite or by water streams to the surface. 

You have to shift over two hundred tones of rock for every carat of diamond Colour diamonds are found in nature but they're extremely rare, among their number are the great legends of the diamond world, like the Hope diamond, the Dresden Green, the Tiffany Yellow.

Fancy colour diamonds are highly prized and they're hideously expensiveOur job as marketers is not to make women want diamonds, they want them before we start, but to help them to get them.

We talk to enough women around the world about diamonds to know what it is that they dream about. They dream about owning a piece of eternity.
 

Under ultraviolet light both natural and synthetic diamonds will glow to some degree, this is called fluorescence.

But it's the patterns that are revealed by this glowing fluorescence that can tell the two apart.                                                   

The largest faceted diamond in the world is the Golden Jubilee,
weighing 545.67 carats.
It is a Fancy Brownish-Yellow color and "fire rose cushion cut."
It is unusual also because it has a certain type of rare color banding.
The second largest faceted diamond in the world is the Star of Africa,
also known as the Cullinan I.

It weighs 530.20 carats and is a pear shape with 74 facets.
The third largest diamond in the world is the Incomparable.
It is a golden yellow-orange color, pear shaped, and weighs 407 carats.
The fourth largest faceted diamond in the world is the Cullinan II.
It was cut from the same stone as the Star of Africa - aka Cullinan I.
It weighs 317.40 carats and is a cushion cut.

JAN.10 The 1867 discovery of diamonds in the Cape Colony, now a province in South Africa, radically modified not only the world's supply of diamonds but also its conception of them.

The story of diamonds in South Africa begins between December 1866 and February 1867, when 15-year-old Erasmus Jacobs found a transparent stone on his father's farm, on the south bank of the Orange River.

Over the next 15 years, South Africa yielded more diamonds than India had in over 2,000 years. This great outpouring of diamonds coincided with depletion of Brazilian deposits and with a great rise in wealth, particularly in the United States, that ensured diamond prices did not fall as they did when Brazil outproduced diamond demand in the 1730s.

Plan of concessions and claims at the Kimberley mine from June 30, 1883. click to zoom in
 
The first diamond discoveries in South Africa were alluvial. By 1869, diamonds were found far from any stream or river, first in yellow earth and below in hard rock called blueground, later called kimberlite, after the mining town of Kimberley.

In the 1870s and 1880s Kimberley, encompassing the mines that produced 95% of the world's diamonds, was home to great wealth and fierce rivalries, most notably that between Rhodes and Barnato, English immigrants who consolidated early 31-foot-square prospects into ever larger holdings and mining companies. In 1888, Rhodes prevailed and merged the holdings of both men into De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., a company that is still synonymous with diamonds.

Today South Africa is third in production in terms of value and is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future

                                           HEARTS & ARROWS

JAN.10 Hearts & Arrows cut diamonds are gems that, thanks to the work of expert cutters and polishers, seem to possess inside a pattern of hearts and arrows when viewed with a hearts & arrows viewer.
These diamonds are extremely well cut and provide a superb amount of brilliance and sparkle.