No More White Weddings
Bride magazine predicts black diamonds for 2009?! Billy Idol wouldn’t know what to do if this were true but a trend is pushing its way and provides celebrity Carmen Electra to lead the parade.
Black diamonds are an interesting and very different look but why did so many jewelry professionals think so poorly of the black diamond. Maybe because it is a lower form of carbon that didn’t quite make the transformation to a pure crystal diamond? Well it is true but eh industry is changing and the stone that they use to hold with such low esteem is now showing up in designer lines everywhere and this “faceted lump of coal” is now a staple in the jewelry industry.
In India, where nearly all the world’s faceted black diamonds are cut, they are known as “carbons,” a shortening of “carbonado,” a trade term for a specific variety of highly opaque and included industrial stone thought to be the toughest diamond known. While many black diamonds are not carbonados, all can be put under the large heading of industrial diamond known as “bort,” a term derived from an old French word for bastard. This fact doesn’t help matters any for what are best viewed as crystallographically-challenged diamonds.
According to gemologist Stephen Hofer, author of the landmark Collecting and Classifying, most black diamonds are in “a transitional carbon state between graphite and pure diamond.” This means most are polycrystalline aggregates as opposed to single crystals. “The typical black diamond,” Hofer continues, “is composed of a mishmash of atoms rather than a regular, homogenous arrangement. As a consequence, their atomic lattice has many areas of weakness that cause stones to chip frequently on the wheel.”
Cutting black diamonds is a time-consuming process, which is why most hail from India where low cost permits the man hours needed to fashion these stones. Essentially, says dealer Aaron Kavakeb of Gem Melody in New York, “You are cutting a giant black pique with diamond inclusions in it.” For this reason, many black diamonds are marred by pits, breaks, and areas of transparency, even when pampered on the wheel.
To avoid the appearance problems common with natural-color black diamonds, some designers use easily-cut conventional stones with low color and clarity ratings that have been irradiated to make them look like black onyx: the ideal for black diamond.
Midnight Magic
Occasionally, a pure-crystal natural black diamond comes along that puts competing species to shame and is one of nature’s glories. Such stones are ultra-rare and have been the object of a secret search among collectors that rivals the more public quest for fugitive colors such as red.
As Hofer demonstrates in his indispensable book, there has been a centuries-long hunt for a rarity called the “pure crystal black diamond.” For instance, the 1839 catalog of Henry Philip Hope, whose giant blue diamond now in the Smithsonian is arguably the world’s most famous diamond, lists a 1.25 carat black round-brilliant. The 1874 catalog of the Duke of Brunswick, Hope’s best-known peer among 19th century collectors of colored diamonds, lists five blacks of varying shades from “noir transparent” to “macadam”
This example of a connoisseur-class black diamond, is a 33.74 carat pear-shaped called the Star of Amsterdam. Cut by Holland’s Max Drukker from a 55.85 carat bort in 1972, this 145-facet stone is jet-black through and through. Ward feels that when you couple the stone’s exceptional color with its high polish and uniformly smooth surface, you have “a black diamond as fine as any ever cut. If nothing else, it proves black diamonds can be as awe-inspiringly beautiful as any other diamond. The stone was first shown in February, 1973, at D. Drukker & Zn., Amsterdam. It was auctioned off at Christie’s in November, 2001, for $352,000, setting a world record for the highest price fetched by black diamond at auction. The stone is cut in a pear shape, with horizontally split main facets on the crown.
Jewelers and consumers looking for black diamonds probably won’t be able to find stones this lustrous, even-colored, and defect-free. But since most demand for blacks is in melee sizes from .01 to .05 carats, they can expect decent stones with fairly uniform color and minimal clarity problems. Although larger sizes are more, the price difference is not as much as with colorless diamonds. “You might think that the cost difference between 1 carat and melee black diamonds should be the same as for white diamonds,” says Ambrish Sethi of Manak Jewels in San Francisco, a specialist in both antique-cut and fancy color diamonds. “But since most of the cost of a black diamond stems from the labor rather than the value of the material, the difference in cost for melee versus caraters is only double while for whites it is ten times. That makes fine black diamonds in larger sizes an impressive bargain.”
