If you adore massive bling and dream about wearing egg-sized gems, here’s the latest diamond news.
Christie's sells ‘Mirror of love’ 50 carat diamond earrings
They’re calling it a bargain. But that’s only if you happen to have millions of quid spare to spend on splendid jewels. A pair of pear-shaped diamond earrings called ‘Mirror of Love’ sold at Christie's recently for 17.57 million Swiss Francs, around £14 million. Amazingly, the auction price fell well below the estimate of 20-30 million Francs. They were just one item in Christies’ so-called Magnificent Jewels auction, which generated a total of around 78 million pounds, not to be sneezed at. The earrings featured the biggest D-flawless white pear-shaped diamonds in the world, the very finest quality you can get, and were bought by ‘a collector’.
Christie's also sell pear-shaped pink diamond ring for £14 million-ish
Another diamond to find a good home thanks to Christie's was a unique sugary pink 9.14 Carat, pear-shaped diamond ring, a highly prized natural ‘fancy vivid’ coloured diamond. Apparently, a collector from Asia snapped it up. Some say it’s a stunning gem. Others feel it looks like something cheap and glitzy you might get in a Christmas cracker, so big and flashy it doesn’t look real. What do you think?
New ‘high jewellery’ watches from Audemars Piguet
Audemars Piguet, the uber-luxury Swiss watchmaker, has been busy taking the category to a whole new level. Their latest creations are causing a stir in the high altitude world of the super rich, as the final member of the Haute Joaillerie Diamond trilogy women’s watch collection becomes available, this time called Diamond Outrage.
It follows on from the Diamond Punk watches launched in 2015 and the second in the trilogy, this year’s Diamond Fury. They’re both totally smothered in diamonds, and neither is exactly delicate. They’re huge, dramatic, and bold. And they’re yours if you have a cool half a million spare.
The Diamond Punk watch was inspired by the revolutionary music movement of the 1970s, a forest of diamond-encrusted white gold pyramids. The Diamond Fury was an even more over the top, featuring gem-studded reptile-inspired scales. The Punk took skilled craftsmen 1440 hours to make and the Fury 1500. But the latest creation, Diamond Outrage, took an awesome 2500 hours to make and used almost twice the amount of diamonds than the first two in the series.
New diamond cuts created to deliver even more sparkle
The 58 facet round brilliant diamond cut was invented in 1919 by Marcel Tolkowsky, and it completely changed the way the stones looked. The past two decades have seen some innovative new diamond cuts coming on board, each created to deliver even more of the gemstone’s legendary sparkle. Now we’re seeing another flurry of creativity.
While you can’t improve the carat, quality or colour of a diamond, you can certainly maximise the stone’s beauty and appeal with a really good cut. And that’s why these new cut styles are coming in. Some of the new cuts deliver 30% more brilliance thanks to ‘supersizing’ the facet count of round brilliant diamonds to 89. But DeBeers says extra facts alone do not guarantee extra sparkle. It’s the alignment of the facets that matter most in pursuit of brilliance.
In DeBeers’ experience, people prefer classic cuts that sparkle from every angle and in every kind of light over novelty cuts. But earlier this year Forevermark, a retail brand belonging to DeBeers, released a collection of modified fancy cuts called Black Label, including stones cut in cushion shape, square, oval and round shapes. Tiffany’s Lucida square cut has stuck around, launched in 1999 and still a popular choice for engagement rings, as has Garrard’s Eternal cut. The first batch of DeBeers new oval cut diamonds sold out in less than six months, a sign of its popularity. Experts say it’s because the diamond industry is desperate for innovation in both jewellery design and diamond cuts.
Nirav Modi also features four new patented cuts in his Bond Street store in London, the most popular of which is the Endless cut, which cleverly curves gems so they fit perfectly around the finger in a continuous pattern that leaves the setting almost invisible. Mr Modi has dreamed about creating the cut for two decades, and the first gem cut that way was a gift of love to his wife. Lucky lady! Will these brilliant new diamond cuts hold up against the ever-popular modern round brilliant stone or will they fade into insignificance? We’ll see…
Come back next time for more news about diamonds, gold, engagement rings, eternity rings, wedding rings, romance and everything sparkly.