Posts Tagged ‘fancy color’

Violet Diamond

David Federman

Modern Jeweler

When he published his monumental “Collecting and Classifying Coloured Diamonds” in 1998, Stephen Hofer outraged some dealers who specialize in these rarities by refusing to include a section on violet diamonds. In a note near the end of the book, he declared: “ . . . Violet does not occur as a bona fide colour variety in natural diamonds.”

Hofer had agonized over this omission throughout the writing of his book. Although he had seen diamonds with tinges of violet, he had never seen ones with color he could call “inherently pure violet.” Neither, he was willing to bet, had those fancy color diamond dealers who, nonetheless, were likely to be unhappy with his decision. As a gemologist well-versed in color science, he distinguished a hint of color usually seen in a diamond’s face-up position from a full-fledged hue observed in the rock’s bottom. For there to be a variety of diamond worthy to be called violet, at least one stone had to have a body color of unalloyed violet. Unless or until he found such a stone, Hofer felt duty-bound to leave out a section on violet.

View Full Article: http://www.modernjeweler.com/web/online/Diamond-Gem-Profiles/Violet-Diamond/2$284

Australian Pink Diamond

David Federman

Modern Jeweler

Call it either grace or irony. But scattered throughout western Australia’s mammoth but so far mediocre diamond output, comprised mostly of industrials selling for under $10 per carat, are a few fancy pink stones that have commanded up to $400,000 per carat at auction. “We’re talking pink with a capital ‘P,’” says a New York fancy color diamond specialist.

Before 1985, few pink diamonds deserved even a small “p.” So dealers settled for faintly colored stones, believing darker hues too much to expect from nature any more than once or twice in a century.

Fancy pink diamond image courtesy of Novel Collection.

View Full Article: http://www.modernjeweler.com/web/online/Diamond-Gem-Profiles/Australian-Pink-Diamond/2$280

Green Diamond

David Federman

Modern Jeweler

No fancy color diamond collection is complete without a green stone. But since, next to red, green is probably the rarest of all natural diamond hues, most collections lack representation from the green portion of the diamond rainbow. Even when they do contain greens, the stones’ color is usually not a bona fide natural one—or at least not classified as such by a gem lab of stature.

Needless to say, this is a rather frustrating situation for connoisseurs. And it arises out of the highly ironic fact that green, while among the rarest of natural diamond colors, is the commonest of artificial ones—easily induced by alpha, electron, gamma and neutron irradiation. Yet connoisseurs spurn stones with lab-contrived color, instead dreaming of some day owning a green diamond with incontestably natural color.

Two natural green diamonds, each less than a carat in size, courtesy of L.J. West, New York.

View Full Article: http://www.modernjeweler.com/web/online/Diamond-Gem-Profiles/Green-Diamond/2$267

Fancy Brown Diamond

Source: Modern Jeweler

One fancy color diamond specialist I know likes nothing better than showing a mouth-watering array of lovely brown diamonds to out-of-town jewelers who visit him in New York. But the vacant stares that usually greet these stones quickly remind him that brown diamonds are still a seldom acquired taste. Nevertheless, he’s convinced that some day soon the very same diamonds will become a required taste. For reasons that have nothing to do with aesthetics.

“It’s a matter of economics,” he explains. “Fancy brown diamonds are just about the only bargains left in the diamond kingdom.”

So it would seem. Today the standard pure-brown stone, possessing what the trade calls either coffee or chocolate color, costs no more than a commercial-grade colorless diamond in a 1 carat size, often far less. Indeed, side by side comparisons of the typical colorless 1-carat retail store diamond with its same-price fancy brown counterpart will often show the brown diamond to be a far better bargain.

View Full Article: http://www.modernjeweler.com/web/online/Diamond-Gem-Profiles/Fancy-Brown-Diamond/2$276

Red Diamond

 David Federman

Modern Jeweler 

“When a sapphire crosses over the line of saturation from pink to red and becomes a ruby, you’re usually glad it did,” says Bruce Smith, a fancy color diamond specialist in New York City. “But when a diamond crosses the very same line, you almost always wish it hadn’t.”

Not that pink diamonds, ultra-rare to begin with, stray into red territory all that often. They only do so once in a blue moon. Alas, when they do, says gemologist Stephen Hofer, author of Collecting and Classifying Coloured Diamonds, “their color is never strong enough to justify comparison to lipstick or stop signs.”

View Full Article: http://www.modernjeweler.com/web/online/Diamond-Gem-Profiles/Red-Diamond/2$286

Fancy Colored Diamonds Begin to Go Mainstream

The Diamond Registry

June 2007  

Once only the stuff of movie stars, the super-rich and legends, colored diamonds have seemingly fully entered the consciousness of the average consumer.

With more and more celebrities, especially younger starlets and the hip-hop community, taking to colored diamonds and showing them off on the red carpet, interest in and demand for the stones is on the rise. Jewelry designers began several seasons ago to include the stones in their creations, often as accents to other gemstones or, especially in the case of brown or champagne diamond, peppered yellow gold with stones for a subtle sparkle.

Actress and Tori Spelling was the latest star to show off colored diamonds, with a fancy color three stone band given to her by her husband after the birth of their child, an event that was much publicized on their reality TV show.

They have also been helped by the promotion efforts of the Natural Colored Diamond Association, based out of New York, started by mining companies with the goal of increasing awareness of natural colored stones.

 View the full article here: http://www.diamondregistry.com/News/2007/fancy.htm