Right, so when I thought about how to organize the cuts on types of stones, to lay them out, my brain went to historically, because that's how it works. #JewelWatch

But also, it starts out simple, and gets increasingly more complex, so it's not a bad approach.

This is slanted toward central Asian and European history, because that's what I know. If at any time any of you have something to add, sing out.

We don't have much knowledge about REALLY ancient diamonds, because they've been cut and recut through history.

But everyone seems to agree that the Golconda Mines in eastern India were the source of most of the west's biggest, best colored stones.

Now. There's - roughly, in non-geologist terms - two kinds of gemstone mining. Placer deposits, and hard rock mines. Hard rock mines are just that. You start drilling and yoink the stones out of the ground, or kimberlite pipe, as the case may be.

However, Golconda is thought to be the world's biggest placer deposit. (My estimation, not anyone else's.) That means rocks washing down out of the Himalaya for millennia, would gather into one large river (since changed course), slap into a set of cliffs at Golconda --

-- and with the slowing of the river, would drop all sorts of rocks and debris. Yeeeears and years and years.

(I've wondered for decades if there was another one, NORTH of the Himalaya, for the runoff that way. It might be on the Lena River in Siberia. There's a mine there.)

So. Golconda mines. The placer deposit to end all placer deposits. There's a list of KNOWN noteworthy diamonds here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golconda_diamonds#Notable_diamonds

It almost has to have been mined from the stone age.

By the time India was a governed, organized area, the mines were going full blast, supplying kings and emperors and shahs and kahns. Law was, that the Maharajah (they used a HOST of titles through the millennia we're covering, make it easy on me) had dibs on anything over 10ct.

And then, in one of history's odd what-the-fuck-just-happened twists, Nader Shah of Iran (and a lot of other places at the time), decided to conquer India.

He did.

1739.

Then he gathered up the cream of Golconda's output for centuries at least, and hauled it home.

Much of it can still be seen, it's with the crown jewels the non-Shah of Iran had made in the 1950s. Every once in a while, some Euro will drag over there and ask to see them. They're in the Bank of Baghdad.

And often they get in. There are bowls of loose stones.

Also Trunks of pearls, and boxes of emeralds.

And that's kind of when they got on the map in Europe, so to speak, and the colonization began in earnest. They'd been around since the 1600s, trying to trade as much as possible, but boxes of gems were a big incentive.

Right. That laid some foundation so you've got an idea what we're trying to pick details out of. It's not easy.

The oldest known diamond in Europe - this cracked me up when I found it - is the Briolette of India. Eleanor of Aquitaine is said to have "brought it to Europe" - really sketchy on detail, huh? - in the 1300s. Already they were accessing Indian diamonds.

Ninety carats and change, it's said to be older than the Koh-i-Noor, which is interesting because we don't really know how old it is, either. It would appear and disappear from history. Richard the Lionheart took it on crusade.

Henry II of France gave it to his mistress. And so forth.

It turned up again in 1950, when Harry Winston bought it off another maharajah. I wish I could tell you I believe 100% that this is the same stone. But OTOH, where else would Harry get a 90ct diamond?

Mrs Winston wore it to a soiree in '74, and made a splash.

Then someone else - details are, as always, vague - examined it, and the one we have now was cut in the early 1900s. 20th century rock.

Welcome to gemstone history. That's how it goes.

And so enters Jean-Baptiste Travernier, one of the shadiest motherfuckers in gem history. Many of our early details come from him, and his journals. He kept drawings of diamonds he saw.

He was a gem dealer, and claimed he made six voyages to what was then Persia, and India between the years 1630 and 1668.

I wouldn't be shocked if he went straight to Mumbai, drank a lot of coffee, bought some cool stuff, and went home and made the rest up.

Oh, here's our white colonialist wanker of the moment, in "oriental costume" in 1679.

But this is where we first encounter what I think of as the learning curve of diamond cutting.

In the "Diamond Throne" of Shah Jehan, the current ruler of areas that became modern India, was a pink stone, crystal clear, and a diamond. That's what the diamond throne was; a throne studded with all Golconda's best.

Travernier's drawing:

Nader Shah hadn't plundered the joint yet. (I wonder if most of our great diamonds with foggy pasts, originally came from that throne.) So to repeat from before, here she is.

Travernier coveted it, I'm sure, but left it the hell alone because he had more sense than some colonialists.

Nader Shah took it back to Iran, and rumor says, had it cut into several pieces. We have two left. We think.

One is the Nur Ul Ain, which is a half sphere.

And one is the Darya I Noor. (Noor means 'light'.)

You can see the start of diamond cutting. They smoothed it out like a brick at first, then when re-cutting, put some rudimentary facets in. It was about clarity.

We (meaning all of humanity; specifically, the Iranians) still have the Darya I Noor. It's in the Bank of Baghdad.

It was decorated at some point, there was a shah who liked to wear it.

A Canadian team studied it in '65 and concluded that the whole thing is possibly true.

If it were simply a random pink diamond, I'd wonder. But given the rest of the piles of rocks they have as proof of the story, I lean toward calling it legit.

So that's the start of diamonds in history and the most basic cut. Table cut, smooth out one side, knock the corners off, point the underside if possible. The Great Table demonstrates, the point on the bottom can be optional.

But those are the start for most round and square/rectangular cuts. At least until the last couple years when things have gone insane.

Tavernier (my spelling sucks) kept detailed records of stones he saw, even ones he wasn't allowed to buy - like the Great Table. So we know that by then, India was fairly well advanced in diamond and gem cutting.

It looks like India would polish raw stones, then add facets as the shape allowed, for sparkle. No one had gotten to light refraction yet. For example, The Great Mogul, 280ct. This is a replica. But you can see, polished, some facets added.

This one's lost to history. Nader Shah was assassinated in 1747 and poof.

Tavernier saw it and drew pictures; that's how the re-creation was done. He described it as half an egg, with a rose cut on the top. So the rose cut was being done in Europe by then.

Before we dig into the rose cut and progress from there through to today's ??? cuts, a sidebar on ol' Tavernier.

He bought a blue diamond, named the Tavernier Blue, and brought it back to Europe.

Tavernier sold it to Louis 14th. And now you know where it's going. Five years later, Louis had it recut by his court jeweler Jean Pitau. It became known as the French Blue and was part of the crown jewels.

Not a bad job for the time, they didn't even understand light refraction, let alone having computer modeled suggestions. It was all in their head.

So, then the French Revolution happened, and everything went to hell and the crown jewels mostly vanished.

Then in 1839, a blue diamond turned up in the listing of a gem collection, owned by a London banker named Hope.

It bounced between Europe and the US, got a reputation for being cursed, because it was the French Blue recut. Eventually it was purchased by Harry Winston (ugh, him again), and donated to the Smithsonian.

There was a great deal of yes-it-is no-it-isn't over the Hope being the French Blue recut. The biggest argument against, was that the color was off, from descriptions of the French Blue.

Studies in the last few decades have shown that the color in the hope --

-- is unevenly distributed, so yes, it would change color when cut.

And most of us said "HA, TOLD YOU" and most people accepted that the Hope was the old French blue.

Here are replicas of all three, to see the recuts are easily possible:

And a last fun fact about the Hope. Like some other diamonds (it all depends on what other chemicals are in there) fluoresce in UV light. The Hope, and ONE diamond in its historic setting, fluoresce.

One last thing before we wrap up for the night: a vital thing to remember that until computerized diamond cutting was developed - practical usage began around 2008 from what I can tell, though other systems were used for decades before that - ALL DIAMOND CUTS WERE CUSTOM.

Okay. Beginning where we left off, which was, all diamond cuts are custom.

Wikipedia lists 37 cuts that are fairly standard and well known. Here's a cheat-sheet for some of them.

Which is all well and good, but then you get into applying THAT game plan onto a chunk of rough stone, and until recently, that plan was just a vague suggestion and you did the best you could.

Cushion cuts in general are a joke. Pillow shaped? Cushion cut.

But what all these things are trying to accomplish, is maximizing both the size and the sparkle. Cut away as little diamond as possible (losing less than 50% of a rough diamond in cutting is considered a win; HALF goes bye-bye) and making it sparkly as possible.

Keep in mind this is AFTER the concept and knowledge of optics was discovered; before that, they just cut random facets for sparkle, and diamonds like that have a nice little glow to them that's pretty but not HOLY SHIT like we're used to now.

And that brings us to the rose cut. Which, as I said last night, Tavernier knew about, so it was in use in Europe by then. Not quite random faceting, but done with the idea of surface sparkle, not depth and reflection and refraction.

Of the ENTIRE FOLDER of images I saved for this, did I find and save a rose cut diagram? OF COURSE NOT.

All right. There we are.

They were used from the time people in Europe were able to accurately cut diamonds, which wasn't until the early 1600s. Diamonds are hard. But they used the cut to emphasize the luster/glow of the stones.

(That's a fairly modern ring; the stones in the actual ring look like a type of brilliant cut, and using stones that way only goes back to maybe the 1950s but I suspect more like the 1990s.)

Some of these new clear-set diamonds, are old roses.

I love it, high-tech new jewelry with one of the oldest known cuts.

Some of the new flat cuts, though, I think are double roses with the tops smoothed off, or cushion cuts with giant tables (the flat bit).

With as clear as they are, they might simply be double roses and we can't tell.

I'm throwing this story in here, because it's just so mind-blowing; a probably ancient stone with a modern cut.

The last Nizam of Hyderabad found the diamond in the toe of one of his dad's shoes. From accounts it sounds like it was in a rough shape.

I suspect he knew what he had, and used it as a paperweight for years. Eventually in 1995, he sold it to the government of India for $13mil. Experts said they thought it was a Golconda diamond discovered in 1884 but I've seen no explanation for that date.

Anyway, the government of India had it cut into - ha - a cushion cut, and now it lives in a government vault when it isn't on tour.

It has 58 facets, 39.5 mm long, 29.25 mm wide, and 22.5 mm deep. The diamond weighs 184.75ct.

Which brings us to another point I wanted to make; the size of the stone has a lot to do with how many facets it ends up with. Not only because of the obvious, but the ultra-small stones used in micro-mosaic aren't big enough to refract light the way a large brilliant can.

After the rose cut, or rather during the use of the rose cut which has never apparently stopped, other cuts were developed. You can see all of them - mostly - are variants on the rose, and flat on the bottom, or a mirror of the top.

Some worked better than others, you can tell by looking at them. FYI the grey spots are known as dead spots, at least in modern "make it super fuckin' sparkly" diamond cuts.

With everything they'd learned from those, by the late 1800s the Old Mine Cut was developed.

That's on a cushion stone but round ones were cut much the same way. You still see them around a lot, either in antiques or new jewelry done by jewelers harvesting old jewelry. Because when S African mines went into production, it's mostly the cut used.

There were variations then, too. Of course.

Peruzzi cut:

And the most famous use of some kind of round mine cut, the Albert Brooch. Made in the 1840s, so the GIA is off on their date of old mine cut variations. There isn't any kind of timeline I can find and I think now it's impossible, seeing the data. Anyway.

What cut is it? Technically, the question is what cuts. Each one would have been done slightly differently dictated by the size of the rough they were working with. But you can see the characteristic cross and dot in the center of several of them. See it?

The one at one o'clock on the Albert Brooch is the easiest to see it in, IMO. Each of them is slightly deeper or shallower, so not all of them show the bottom of the stone properly. That's how it was.

So now, look at this, and be as annoyed as I get:

That's the replica Albert Brooch for sale by the Royal Trust.

They couldn't find some goddamn mine cut cubic zirconia? They stuck brilliant cuts on something from 1840??

Bah.

Then, in 1919, with all the stones from S Africa flooding the market and everyone convinced science could solve all problems, they needed something new. And a guy who could think in three dimensions, Marcel Tolkowsky, gave it to them.

The Brilliant Cut.

Click through to see the second photo, it's a comparison.

And since I'm trying to hit all diamond cuts, I skipped over a few other stone types from the 1800s. The European cut,

And a handy comparison chart.

Most larger stones then were either in some kind of oval cut like the sapphire in the Albert Brooch,

There were goddamn variations, OF COURSE, mostly to do with the faceting on the bottom.

Or, a pear cut, probably developed for rough shaped that way. (Diamonds naturally grow in octohedrons. Knock the top off one and hello, pear diamond.)

And that's it for data tonight, fuck it, let's look at some rocks.

A Golconda diamond, the Akbar Shah, 88ct and change, and octagonal in shape. This is an old one that never got recut; they polished it, carved it, and put in a groove for setting purposes.

Now in the Kremlin.

It has carvings on three sides:
Nizām Shāh: 1000 (=1591 CE).
Jahān Shāh: 1051 (=1641 CE).
Fath 'Alī Shāh: 1242 (1826 CE).

And it's slightly yellowish due to iron oxide. But damned historic.

The Orlov diamond, another Indian stone. Seems like it was cut in a similar style as the Great Mogul.

Classic story of being stolen out of the eye of a temple statue in India (classy as fuck, Europe), lots of back-and-forthing, and it eventually landed in the scepter of Catharine the Great.

It's also in the Kremlin.

The Dresden Green, which almost got stolen in the last year or two. Came from the Kollur mine around the corner from Golconda.

Another of those custom cuts. It's a cushion! it's a pear!

It's set in some kind of epaulet/decorative medal sort of thing, and lives in the Dresden Museum. (When the place got knocked over, it was out for repairs or a tour or something.)

That's a bezel setting, I believe.

The reason a lot of these look different in each photo, is they're reflecting the light they've got, and so in different types of light, it looks different.

Incandescent has almost no red to reflect, so super green!

The Bazu, which was part of the Golden Fleece in the French Crown Jewels. This is a reproduction/drawing, because it poofed with the Revolution. There was a 42 facet table cut diamond listed with the French Jewels, and this is thought to be it.

Bracelet from the 1880s. The - is that a cameo or just a carving? I say just carving. It's bloodstone. You can see diamonds too, you can zoom in and guess what they are. I think the two larger ones are rose cut or a variation.

The DeYoung Red. 5ct ish. Cut as a modified brilliant, it's one of the largest known red diamonds. They're red due to a glitch in the crystalline structure, and the rarest color.

This one lives at the Smithsoanian.

A newer cut, it's like a cabochon got bored. They're calling it a Checkerboard, and you can see, that's about what's done to the surface of the stone. No other details, but look at the four prong setting; someone trusts the metal.

The Hortensia diamond. 20ct, they're calling it a pentagonal cut, currently with the French Crown Jewels, it was a Golconda diamond, purchased by the French king in the 1600s.

Every cut was a custom cut. I especially like that random twang sticking up on top.

The Sancy diamond, another fucking weird cut, from India. These seem to be original Golconda diamonds that for once no one screwed with. Appeared in 1570 belonging to Charles the Bold, of Burgundy.

The history's nuts. Chuck died and it went to his cousin the King of Portugal. He fled the country with the crown jewels and sold it to Someone deSancy. (Other sources say deSancy bought it himself in Constantinople.) Then the French Kings had it.

Then someone messengered it somewhere and the dead messenger had it in his stomach. Someone needs to make several movies because the history won't fit in one. Eventually it landed at Sotheby's and is now in the Louvre.

The Heart of Eternity blue diamond, 27cts that deserved better. With a private owner, I believe.

24.7cts, the "Graff Pink" is a good example of the Emerald cut. Either still with Graff's, or sold to a private customer.

Nice example of an oval cut, it's a pink topaz, it's 18cts and said to belong to Marie Antoinette. I don't know the current location.

But see how the facets in the back interact with the facets in the front? That's a great cut for colored gemstones because of that.

The Tiffany Yellow diamond, best known for this publicity stunt.

Discovered S Africa 1877, 287cts in the rough, Charles Tiffany bought it the next year for eighteen grand. Currently worth thirty million.

Cut by George Kunz, a famous gemologist. Some variation of a cushion cut.

It's been rolling around the back rooms, or put on display, for all these years. Kind of a mascot of the house. There have been multiple settings; they just pop it out and put it in another.

My favorite is when Audrey Hepburn wore it as another publicity stunt, promoting Breakfast at Tiffany's.

And last one for the night, the Orlov BLACK diamond. Shown on a human first, for scale.

Another one stolen from the eye of a Hindu god, those with no couth also call it the Eye of Brahma because of the story, a Jesuit priest did the stealing and of course now it's cursed.

A half-assed octagonal cushion cut, it's 67cts and change in cut form. Three people including two Russian noblewomen (one named Orlov) supposedly jumped out of windows because of it. So they cut it in three pieces to break the curse - how far can I roll my eyes.

In the possession of Dennis Petimezas, a gemstone dealer, since 2004. He loans it out to natural history museums, and says he doesn't feel cursed.

Tomorrow, maybe, but the next installment, we do the 20th century, step cuts, and Art Deco.