Illustrated Guide

to the natural beauty and value of coloured diamonds

Crucial Colour and Cut

Our everyday lives and emotions are shaped by colour. A blue sky, a green forest, a fiery sunset. They touch us deeply. coloured diamonds come in every colour in nature, sometimes combining them in the most beguiling ways.

Two factors other than size help to determine the value of coloured diamonds. One is colour, the other is quality of cut, or craftsmanship.

First, colours. Crystalline cocktails concocted by nature over tens of millions of years. Colours are part mystery, part science. Blue diamonds derive from the element boron, blended over eons within the carbon base of the diamond. Yellow diamonds acquire their vibrant colours from nitrogen. Grey, violet and olive diamonds contain hydrogen. Pink, brown and purple tinges in some diamonds derive from structural anomalies within the diamond. Some diamonds attain a green colour from contact with a natural source of radiation, probably uranium ore.

Second, craftsmanship. Each coloured diamond is unique not only because of its natural colouration, but also the way it is cut. Most are fashioned into cushion or radiant shapes, forms which best bring out the depth of hue. The most skilled cutters shorten the optical light path through the diamond, creating the bright sparkle from reflections. Colour may be intensified by cutting deeper pavilions and creating different facets. The cutting of coloured diamonds is crucially important, performed by highly-skilled craftsmen. Different regions of the earth have yielded particular types of coloured diamonds, and each requires a master cutter’s knowledge and appreciation to unlock the beauty within.

“ ... An architect who created a beautiful edifice, an artist who painted a fine picture, a poet who composed melodious rhymes — they are all gripped with one feeling — a lapidary (gem cutter) feels the same way.”
D. Kreptiukov 1929

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