The comedian Rodney Dangerfield didn’t get any respect and fortunately for his line of work he didn’t expect any. When I show up in Antwerp I get plenty of respect but not the first time I walk in the door of a cutter with my own tools and grade all the diamonds I look at twice over. They really want me to be looser in my expectations and less observant in my grading. I can’t be of course because when buying for my customers I’m obligated to get them not only the best price I can there but also the best stone for the price. That includes avoiding problem stones not just by grade and cut but also by durability.  They really do not want me paying this much attention.

On one trip last year I examined a package where I found many twinned diamonds. So many in fact it exceeded the total number that I’ve seen in over forty years of experience. Something like that shakes you. A twinned diamond is one where one diamond grows through another. In fact it can be several growing through each other. Because a diamond has a grain just like a piece of wood those sections between the strong grain could separate if hit just so.  Scrutinizing the diamonds to this degree takes a lot of time. as the clues for many problems are seen only in the suble ripples of the polish.

   There are checks and balances in the Antwerp buying experience. Once you choose a stone protocol requires you to wait 24 hours and then confirm you want them. This gives you the opportunity to shop around.  In a typical 8:30 to 5:00 day you could theoretically see a lot of cutters. Because of the time I spend on each stone I rarely make it to more than three. It works out fine for me as most cutters do not offer the exactness of cut that I’m looking for. I see all those I need to.

      On my last trip in three days I saw only two cutters. One I saw four times and one three. The fact that I’m looking for top cut means that sometimes it’s imperative that I get a  Sarin or Megascope report where a laser reads  every facet and angle on the diamond. The machine takes ten seconds. I have one myself and I know, but a cutter will take an hour or more to get a report to you. Selling is all a relationship. After a while this gets faster. In a good relationship you build trust. Fortunately I can double check on the reports when I get home and know which way the relationship is heading. Later in the day and because of the eight hour time difference I spend time checking in with the store and finding out what additional stones I need to locate as well as letting people know what I put aside that day.

    Aside from looking at diamonds for knots, twinning and graining I have evenings to check out the beer, waffels and do some sightseeing. Antwerp is a beautiful town and less than an hour by train from Brussels which is one of my favorite cities in the world. Almost everyone speaks english and getting around is easy.

 All in all it’s a lot of work but a good time and an amazing experience.

Waffels

  Sometimes we seem stuck in terminology that is more confusing than helpful. When talking about the beauty and light performance of a diamond there have been some noteworthy attempts to make things simpler. The new little plastic cards that have a three bar scale describing light performance are an excellent example. They have three bars with a scale that ranges from Low to High or Good to Ideal the bars are usually in the same order, Brightness or White Light for the top bar, Colored Light, Dispersion or Fire for the second and Scintillation or Sparkle for the third.

      I can see there is still room for confusion. What the systems were originally designed for was to help quantify the things we look for in a diamond.

    The brilliance or total light return in a diamond. How much of the light that enters the diamond from typical viewing angles comes out from those same angles. Since some of that light has been diffracted it’s not just white light. This comes predominately from the proportions of the diamond which has it’s own grade.

       We also wanted to determine how much of the light was broken into it’s prismatic colors  or what we call “Fire“. It used to be that we had the notion that Americans liked Fire or colored light and Europeans liked Ice or white light and we allowed grading to encompass both styles. Today I’m not sure if that was not just a way to give cutters more latitude. The aspect of cutting that creates the greatest amount of fire is the symmetry of the diamond which will have it’s own grade.

    The last thing we wanted to measure was the polish of the diamond. It turns out that polishing lines can affect reflectivity and even deflect some of the light that would have entered the stone. Polish has always been graded separately but by using new techniques we have brought it to new levels of measurement. What we call Scintillation  are the flashes off of the stone. Most of these come from the surface and a better polish will give better scintillation. Unfortunately the term seems to have multiple definitions within the industry which can be misleading. 

     Other than size, the rarity of a diamond is mostly dependent on it’s color. Though most people would not be able to detect the difference between a nearcolorless diamond and a colorless diamond of say a half carat or under in most lighting conditions the difference can be dramatic in rarity and therefore cost. When people are balancing Cut (beauty), Color (rarity) and Clarity (which supports both beauty and rarity) to get the most diamond for their money they typically choose beauty first. Since the differences in color are so subtle in the higher ranges (D to G) it seems like an easy and satisfying call to choose the best cut stone over the rarest color.

   I decided to write a weblog about diamonds and grading because I continually see so much misinformation out there and I felt people need a place where they could ask questions and get an insight into the business. I’m contacted by news organizations when something happens. What I’ve found is that the information or point of view I provide is only available for a short period and sometimes abrieviated to the point of not making sense. This format will allow me to be clear and include perspective and other sources when needed.

     Please feel free to ask questions about diamonds, diamond grading and terminology. The terms are confusing and very picky but I’ll do my best to help you sort through it all.

Charles M. Beaudet

    I’ve heard many explanations for the term Blue white. It was used by most US jewelers up until 1947. Many people believe it was a term that described diamonds that came from the Premier Mine which produced diamonds that had a slight tint of blue. This would seem to be the case because the Federal Trade Commision defined it as such. However it was their definition of it that made it an undesireable term. It was afterward considered an unfair trade practice to call a diamond Blue White.       It’s much more likely that the term which was used as a grading term, meant what my father described to me. He was a jeweler who bought diamonds during that earlier period before the Gemological Institute of America brought diamond grading indoors.     He told me that diamond cutters and dealers saved their best diamonds for a clear day and went to a northern facing window. The diamonds that were so free of body color (which was usually yellow tinted) that the blue from the sky traveled through them unaltered were called blue white. White diamonds were therefore stones that had just enough tint to cancel the blue with white light coming from the stone. The reason grading was taken indoors was it was discovered that some diamonds fluoresce in ultrviolet. Most of those that do fluoresce, fluoresce blue. Sunlight has ultraviolet in it and many diamonds were being overgraded.  Today Blue White stones would be called colorless and white stones near colorless.