The Colors of Light...

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, from sea to shining sea. So, this morning I had the good fortune of waking up to a gorgeous mountain view of Honolulu complete with a world-class rainbow.

Slowly emerging from a drowsy jet lag, I was reminded to get back to my favorite part of the story about the colors associated with diamonds – the seven visible colors of the light spectrum – our good friend Roy G. Biv from grade school – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

As I said, the 4C’s tell us what a diamond is. What is less obvious is what a diamond does.

Until very recently, certificates and grading reports only described the physical features of a diamond. The advent of new “performance” based diamond quality analysis now tells us the direct benefits of certain cutting styles and standards.

The reason we cut diamonds at all is to enhance their beauty – literally to make them shine.

In antiquity if a rough crystal was a certain shape, the cutter delivered a finished diamond of roughly (sic) the same shape. It was more shiny and smaller after being cut and polished, but his goal was always to keep it as big as possible.

We can only imagine the penalties suffered by cutters who delivered diamonds that were deemed too small, because even the most important diamonds were cut by unheralded masters who remain un-named to this day.

It is no small irony that the world’s museums are full of examples of diamonds cut expressly to “save weight” – domes, egg-shapes, flats, lozenges, cushions, and the like. Very few round diamonds, that’s for sure.

Today we know that round diamonds produce the best results in terms of light performance, quite simply because rounds have the highest level of symmetry. It’s a physical fact that all diamond shapes with lesser degrees of symmetry will “leak” some precious light.

Yet, the battle still rages over whether or not to compromise beauty for extra weight. Quality versus quantity. Its an age-old dichotomy.

What is meant by light performance? I'm not just talking about light return. But, I'm also not suggesting that it's rocket science either. Simply put, in order to be beautiful a diamond must be bright and colorful and sparkle like crazy. More importantly, these three elements of beauty should be well-balanced.

Like most elegant equations it's relatively simple, but like most mathematics it can get pretty tricky. If a diamond is too bright and sparkly, it will not be colorful enough. If it is too colorful it will not be bright enough. If it is too sparkly it will become fuzzy.

We’ve been taught to think diamonds should be white (as in body color) and bright and sparkly. What happens when we see colors of the rainbow? We are led to believe the diamond looks too dark. But, we now know that the best cut diamonds have the ability to transform clear light into its component parts - brightness, sparkle and a blazing display of rainbows.

This brings me to,

Rule #2 - In order to appreciate the full value of a diamond, you have to know what to look for.