Size matters: Diamond experts have estimated that American women think

When it comes to engagement rings, budget and personal choice are usually the two biggest factors that influence a couple's decision.

But ultimately, it seems that size really does matter when it comes to that oh-so special accessory - and according to jewelers, the lure of having a rock on one's finger can turn even the most conservative jewelry wearer diamond crazy.

Opinions on size, and what really counts as a 'big' ring, vary however - so Who What Wear asked five diamond experts to reveal what the average American woman considers 'big', with many revealing that the size of diamond given to Meghan Markle by Prince Harry is pretty much perfect.

The royal proposed at the end of last year with a three to four carat diamond he sourced in Botswana; and according to the experts, many women view three carats as 'big', meaning Meghan's rock is ideal in the eyes of most.

To put this into context, Kim Kardashian's ill-fated Lorraine Schwwart knuckle-duster that Kanye West helped design contained a 15 carat diamond - more than five times the size that the average woman sees as 'big'.

It was famously stolen during a robbery in Paris in February 2017.

Meanwhile, Meghan Markle's ring designed by Prince Harry contains a three to four carat center stone that the royal picked up in Botswana.

'Although we often find that a woman may know what a certain diamond size 'sounds' like, she doesn't always know what it looks like,' Krista Beerman, Director of Merchandising at Hearts on Fire told WWW.

And she also revealed that women living on the West and East coats typically go for bigger stones than someone living in the middle of the country.

She added: 'On average, a two-carat is definitely a head turner, and overall women perceive this to be a big look!'

CEO of Ritani Brian Watkins agreed: 'The average engagement ring has a carat weight of just over one carat, so we'd say anything upward of two carats would be considered large for a ring.' (Dailymail)

THESE PERFECTLY IMPERFECT DIAMONDS ARE BUILT FOR QUANTUM PHYSICS

IN THE MID-2000S, diamonds were the hot new thing in physics. It wasn’t because of their size, color, or sparkle, though. These diamonds were ugly: Researchers would cut them into flat squares, millimeters across, until they resembled thin shards of glass. Then they would shoot lasers through them.

Probably the most valuable bauble of all was a minuscule diamond mined from the Ural Mountains. “We called it the ‘magic Russian sample,’” says physicist Kai-Mei Fu of the University of Washington. The diamond was extremely pure—almost all carbon, which isn’t common in this messy world—but with a few impurities that gave it strange quantum mechanical properties. “It had been chopped up among academic groups,” says Fu, who worked with a piece. “You know, take a chisel, chip some off. You don’t need much.” Those properties were promising—but the physicists only had a handful of diamonds to study, so they couldn’t run too many experiments.

That’s not a problem any more. These days, Fu can just go online and buy a $500 quantum-grade diamond for an experiment—from the company Element Six, owned by De Beers. They’ve long grown synthetic diamonds for drilling and machining, but in 2007, with funding from the European Union, they started making exactly the kind physicists need. And not just physicists, any more: Today, the supply of synthetic quantum diamonds is so abundant that lots of fields are exploring their possible uses.

The first field to benefit was quantum computing. Quantum computers—which theoretically should compute certain tasks exponentially faster than regular computers—encode information in quantum mechanical properties such as spin or polarization. These properties can be very unstable. But if you encode information inside a diamond by manipulating its impurities with a laser, the gem’s crystal structure actually protects and preserves that information. Physicists are working to make adjacent impurities interact in a controlled way to execute a primitive algorithm.

Element Six grows these perfectly imperfect diamonds in furnaces at nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Starting with a seed diamond, the company’s engineers pump gases—something carbon-containing, like methane, along with hydrogen and nitrogen—into the furnace. As the gas molecules heat up, they separate into single atoms, some of which land on the seed diamond. A few choice nitrogen atoms sneak in, and the hydrogen keeps the carbon layer growing in the right crystal structure. “Carbon doesn’t really want to be diamond,” says Matthew Markham, a scientist at Element Six. “It really prefers to be graphite.”

At Harvard University, physics grad student Jenny Schloss programs Element Six diamonds with lasers and measures how nearby magnetic fields interfere. But before she can do that, she has to mess the diamonds up even more.

The diamonds Element Six sells have nitrogen impurities—but what Schloss’s group needs is a hole right next to it, called a nitrogen vacancy. (Disclosure: Schloss is a friend from college.) So they send their diamonds to a small New Jersey company called Prism Gem. Most of its business goes to jewelry companies, who ask them to create colored diamonds by knocking carbon atoms out with beams of high-energy electrons. But physicists can use the same process to create more useful holes in their research diamonds.

Prism Gem will shoot electrons at the diamonds for hours—sometimes days—to create the right number of holes. “Typically, scientists know what technical specifications they’re looking for. They’ll send us information on how many electrons they need per centimeter,” says Ashit Gandhi, Prism Gem’s chief technology officer. “Jewelry is more subjective. They’ll ask for light green, dark green, pink, or whatever.” After sitting under the electron beam, Schloss’s diamond, originally tinted yellow from nitrogen impurities, turns pale blue.

Her group then bakes the diamond again, which causes the holes to migrate next to the nitrogen impurities to create the coveted nitrogen vacancy center. Its final color ranges from clear to pink to red, depending on how many impurities they want.

With the quantum diamond supply chain in place, physicists have been able to study and fiddle with the gems in many iterations of experiments. But it’s been a slow process turning the diamond impurities into connected bits that can compute. “The verdict is still out,” says Fu. “Only two quantum bits [in diamond] have ever been connected. Until things become more scalable, I don’t think anyone can say it’s a definite thing.”

But by understanding the diamonds in more detail, researchers have inadvertently come up with another possible use for them. Harvard physicists Mikhail Lukin and Ronald Walsworth—Schloss’s research advisor—knew that when hit with a laser, a nitrogen vacancy diamond would emit different amounts of light if it was near a magnet. The diamond could function as a type of magnetic sensor—one that wasn’t as bulky as current sensors, which also need to be cooled to temperatures near absolute zero.

So in the early 2010s, Lukin and Walsworth’s research team started using the diamonds to study nerve cells, which emit magnetic fields when stimulated. They started with a squid nerve cell, thicker than a human hair. Grad student Matthew Turner traveled to Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, where he excised long, thin white neurons from fresh squid, put them on ice, and jumped on a bus back to the lab to measure its magnetic field under electric stimulation.

Later, the team switched to studying neurons in marine worms, which they could keep in a tank in the lab. About a year ago, they published a paper on the sensitivity of their diamonds to study those neurons. Now, they’re using the diamonds to study magnetic fields given off by human heart cells. (Wired)

Smartphone with diamond screen set for 2019 release

The first phone with a diamond screen will be launched in 2019. This will help address the concern that most smartphone owners face: dropping your phone and cracking the screen. The solution comes from Akhan Semiconductor and it uses laboratory grown diamonds to create a product called Miraj Diamond Glass.
These new, strong screen is intended to be able to cover and protect a smartphone's fragile electronic display. Current smartphone screens are created from toughened glass, which are specially developed shatterproof coatings sometimes supported by sapphire crystal toppers. However, all current screens are prone to damage depending on the force or point of impact.

Interviewed by CNET, Adam Khan, who is the CEO of Akhan Semiconductor states that his new generation of screens, formed of the diamond glass, will be stronger, harder, and cleaner than anything seen previously. Khan's company specialized in growing diamonds for use in electronics.

In terms of what the additional strength means in practice, this is likely to be screens that are between six and ten times tougher than even the most robust 'Gorillas Glass' smartphone screens in current use. The use of diamonds will also prevent damage of the materials underneath the screen, such as any LED panels or sensors.

The toughness not only comes from the naturally hard properties of diamonds, strength also relates to the arrangement. Akhan Semiconductor researchers have developed a nanocrystal pattern that arranges the crystals in a way that avoids alignment along crystal planes. The alternate arrangement guards against the formation of cracks, offering enhanced protection from an impact event.

For 2018 a process of fine tuning is taking place, leading up to the first commercial runs production. The final round of tests are designed to assessthe durability of the glass and ways to minimize the light reflection rate.

The first production runs in 2019 are expected produce 10 and 30 million screens. While this sounds a lot, Apple alone sells between 70 and 80 million iPhone devices per quarter. This means the screens will remain a premium product for several years. (DigitalJournal)

Shrinking gems a headache for diamond industry

The diamond industry has a size problem.
Instead of splashing out on a ring or necklace featuring one big, bright diamond, shoppers are increasingly choosing pieces with several, smaller gems, which are often lower quality. And selling jewellery with smaller stones has been a good way for retailers to save money.
As a result, the diamond content in jewellery has been shrinking since 2011 back to a level last seen almost a decade ago, creating a headache for miners. It’s part of the reason the jewellery industry has been struggling to grow. The amount spent on diamond jewellery items has stayed at about $80bn a year since 2014, according to De Beers.
“Falling diamond content looks likely to continue,” said Anish Aggarwal, a partner at industry consultant Gemdax. “It’s possible that even if diamond jewellery demand increases, the underlining diamond demand does not.”
Less money is being spent on diamonds partly because jewellers are cutting back amid higher overheads and other costs, Aggarwal said. Also, Asian consumers are increasingly accepting lower quality stones.
The anaemic growth has forced gem producers to respond. Top miner De Beers raised its 2017 marketing budget to $140m, the highest in almost a decade. The campaign reversed spending cutbacks that followed the collapse of De Beers’s monopoly in the early 2000s, leaving the industry splintered and unwilling to pay for promotion that could aid rival miners.
The sector also launched the Diamond Producers Association lobby in 2015. The group, which raised its budget almost 10-fold last year, was set up to revive the glory days of 50 years ago, when slogans like "a diamond is forever" were ubiquitous in popular culture.
Gem prices have been pressured in recent years following an industrywide credit crunch and as younger consumers drifted toward other luxury items such as electronics. While an index of rough-diamond prices has increased in the last few months, it’s still more than 40% below a peak set in 2011.
Consultant Bain & Company warned in December that demand could stagnate for another decade unless the industry increases spending to lure consumers. Aggarwal agrees that more advertising is needed.
“The diamond sector still underspends substantially on marketing compared to other luxury products,” Aggarwal said. There is a “need for marketing, to help grow diamond-jewellery demand, ensure diamonds are the product hero and, importantly, to drive polished prices upwards.” (fin24)

One of the Biggest Diamonds in History has been Discovered in Lesotho Recently

One of the biggest diamonds in history has been discovered in the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa.
Gem Diamonds (GMDMF, -1.52%) found the 910-carat stone, about the size of two golf balls, at its Letseng mine in the country. It’s a D color Type IIa diamond, which means it has very few or no nitrogen atoms and is one of the most expensive stones. The diamond is the fifth-biggest ever found.
The Letseng mine is famous for the size and quality of the diamonds it produces and has the highest average selling price in the world. Gem sold a 357-carat stone for $19.3 million in 2015 and in 2006 found the 603-carat Lesotho Promise.
“This exceptional top-quality diamond is the largest to be mined to date and highlights the unsurpassed quality of the Letseng mine,” Chief Executive Officer Clifford Elphick said in a statement.
Gem did not say how it will sell the diamond or what it could be worth. Its value will be determined by the size and quality of the polished stones that can be cut from it. Lucara Diamond Corp. sold a 1,109-carat diamond for $53 million last year, but got a record $63 million for a smaller 813-carat stone it found at the same time in 2015.
“The pricing of diamonds is hugely variable and driven by a multitude of factors,” said Ben Davis, an analyst at Liberum Capital Markets. “But assuming that there are no large inclusions running through the diamond, we initially estimate a sale of $40 million.”
Gem’s mega discovery follows news last week that it had found 117-carat and 110-carat stones. It will be another boost for the company that dropped to a record low last year after prices for its stones fell and it was forced to close a new mine in Botswana. Gem rose as much as 18%, the biggest intraday gain since 2010, and traded at 93 pence by 9:06 a.m. in London.
The three large discoveries will raise investor confidence that the company has overcome a shortage of large stones and that it can recover the biggest diamonds without breaking them. Gem found at least seven stones bigger than 100 carats in 2017 and five the year before. It recovered a dozen exceeding 100 carats in 2015.
The biggest diamond discovered is the 3,106-carat Cullinan, found near Pretoria, in South Africa, in 1905. It was cut to form the Great Star of Africa and the Lesser Star of Africa, which are set in the Crown Jewels of Britain. Lucara’s 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona is the second-biggest, with the 995-carat Excelsior and 969-carat Star of Sierra Leone the third- and fourth-largest.

Human Ashes to Diamond

In a new and unique way to remember loved ones, people can have human ashes made into a diamond.

It may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but more people are doing it, and one of the only companies in the United States that makes these diamonds is just north of Houston, in Conroe.

A struggle many families deal with is what to do with an urn full of a loved one's ashes.

"There is a lot of guilt, because you don't want to hide it or put it in a closet, but what do you do with the cremated remains?" said Christina Martoia, from Algordanza Memorial Diamonds.

Isaias Vega with Del Pueblo Funeral Homesaid people want more when it comes to saying goodbye.

"The younger crowd always wants to seek something new," Vega said. "Some want to know: When you do a cremation, is that it?"

One option is to have the remains made into a genuine diamond.

"The diamond has always been a symbol of love," Martoia said. "They get to keep their loved one with you wherever you go. That's just so special."

Algordanza Memorial Diamonds in Conroe uses only human ashes to create a one-of-a-kind diamond with a blue hue.

"Nothing is added," Martoia said. "We don't manipulate the color of the diamond, so they will tend to range from a clear to a deep blue. They will always have that sort of blue hue within them, and that is from the element boron. The more boron someone has in their body, the more blue the diamond will be."

More people are opting for cremation after death. In 2017, nearly 50 percent of Americans were cremated instead of having a traditional burial. That is up from about 10 percent in 1980.

There are many reasons for this, which include the cost of a burial and that people move around more, meaning they don't have roots in one place.

"Really, every day I look at it and think about it, it's just beautiful," Martoia said.

Martoia said she knows firsthand how having a memorial diamond can help with grieving someone you love.

"On the 10th anniversary of my dad's passing, I had a memorial diamond made. What is really special to me about my memorial diamond is that every time I show it to someone, I get to talk about my dad," she said. "It's such a great, great way to pay tribute to his life. I always get compliments about it and it makes me happy to remember his life."

The remains are sent to a laboratory in Switzerland, where a high pressure, high temperature machine is used to create the diamond. The longer the diamond sits in the machine, the bigger it can become.

"It's something that will last forever, that you can pass on for generations, to really remember your loved one and as a family heirloom, really," Martoia said.

Algordanza Diamonds start off at around $3,000. They have also had clients turn their pet remains into diamonds. However, they do that work at a different facility. (KPRC Click2Houston)

The $3,000 Burger are sold at Pauli's

When ordering a burger, one often chooses between fries and onion rings. At one North End restaurant, you can get an extra ring with your order — an engagement ring.

For those who want to make sure their engagement is well done, Pauli’s, a fast-casual Italian spot in the North End, is offering diners a real gem of a deal this Valentine’s Day: Buy one of Pauli’s Big Boy burgers for the low, low price of $3,000, and the restaurant will stick a 7/8 carat Neil Lane engagement ring from Kay Jewelers in the bun for free.

A $3,000 burger special for Valentine's day at Pauli's

“Nothing says ‘I love you’ quite like Boston’s best burger topped with a princess cut ring framed by round diamonds on a band of 14k gold,” reads a press release. “For $3,000.00, savor the flavor of Pauli’s Big Boy Burger, and simmer in sweet bliss, if they say yes!”

Pauli’s press release adds that customers must reserve the special dish 48 hours in advance and that this offer is “sure to sell out.” So for those of you whose significant other has been waiting for you to say those four magical words (“Valentine’s Day burger proposal”), don’t miss the chance to make his or her dream come true.

1,111 Carats Diamond was bought by "The King of Diamond" Graff

LESEDI La Rona, the largest diamond discovered since the iconic Cullinan diamond in the previous century, has been sold to upmarket British jeweller Graff Diamonds for $53m.

The sale price was in excess of the highest bid offered for the diamond at a Sotheby’s auction in 2016 when Lucara Diamonds, the mining firm that discovered 1,111 carat gem, elected not to sell the item.

“We took our time to find a buyer who would take the diamond through its next stage of evolution,” said William Lamb, CEO and president of Lucara Diamonds in a statement. He described the discovery of Lesedi La Rona as a “company defining event”. It was discovered at Lucara’s Karowe mine in Botswana which is renowned for yielding large diamonds.

Laurence Graff of Graff Diamonds described the purchase as “… a momentous day in my career” and that he was “… privileged to be given the opportunity to honor the magnificent natural beauty of the Lesedi La Rona”. The $53m consideration equates to $47,777 per carat. Lesedi La Rona translates as ‘Our Light’, a name given to the gem following a poll among Batswana.

“The stone will tell us its story, it will dictate how it wants to be cut, and we will take the utmost care to respect its exceptional properties,” said Graff.

Attention will now turn to how the proceeds of the diamond will be allocated by Lucara Diamonds which has established a track-record for dividends.

Lucara warned shareholders in August that owing to its mining contractors’ lack of equipment availability in the second quarter could see full year production as much as 14.5% lower than guided.

Reporting for the quarter as well as its half-year numbers today, in which interim earnings came in at eight US cents per share compared to 17c at the interim in the 2016 financial year, Lucara said full-year production would be between 265,000 to 285,0000 carats compared to previous guidance 290,000 and 310,000 carats.

Putting Standard on Natural and Synthetic Diamond

Leading groups in the diamond and jewelry sectors have collaborated to publish a universal standard to use when referring to natural diamonds and synthetics. 

The Diamond Terminology Guideline is a reference on diamond vocabulary for all sector organizations, traders and retailers to use, nine industry bodies said in a joint statement Tuesday.  

The document stipulates that the words “diamond” and “gemstone” imply natural origin. The industry should use “synthetic,” “laboratory-grown” or “laboratory-created,” and should avoid the terms “real,” “genuine” and “authentic,” when describing such man-made products.

“Protecting consumer confidence is of paramount importance to the long-term success of our industry,” World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO) president Gaetano Cavalieri said. “The Diamond Terminology Guideline is an important tool in achieving this, by helping standardize the terminology used to clearly distinguish between diamonds and synthetic diamonds, in all communications, among ourselves and with our customers.”

The guidelines are based on the ISO Standard 18323 for jewelry and on CIBJO’s diamond Blue Book, which are internationally accepted benchmarks in the field.

The parties that created the document, in addition to CIBJO, are: the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), the Diamond Producers Association (DPA), the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), the Israel Diamond Industry (IDI), the International Diamond Manufacturers Association (IDMA), the US Jewelry Council (USJC), the World Diamond Council (WDC) and the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFBD). 

(Source : Rapaport)