Diamond Education
Diamond Education
The word diamond comes from the Greek adamas, the unconquerable. The ancient Greeks believed diamonds were splinters of fallen stars; the Romans imagined that Cupid's arrows were tipped with them. Few materials have carried so much meaning for so long.
A diamond is pure carbon, formed under immense heat and pressure deep within the earth, often more than a billion years ago. What makes it extraordinary is not its composition, but the way it handles light.
To compare diamonds fairly, the jewellery world shares one language, first set out by the Gemological Institute of America in the mid twentieth century: the 4Cs. Cut, Colour, Clarity and Carat.
Every angle and proportion shapes how light enters the stone and returns to the eye.
Cut
Where a diamond's light comes from. We often use "cut" to mean shape: round, oval, pear or marquise. But a diamond's cut grade describes something else, how well its facets work together to return light. Proportion, symmetry and polish decide whether a stone glows or simply sits. Of the four Cs, cut is the hardest to judge and the one that matters most. A well-cut diamond shows three qualities:
- Brightness, the white light reflected from the stone.
- Fire, light scattered into flashes of colour.
- Scintillation, the sparkle and play of light and shadow as the stone moves.
Colour
The beauty of absence. When jewellers grade a white diamond's colour, they are really grading the absence of it. The scale runs from D, entirely colourless, to Z, with a light yellow or brown tint. Beyond Z, diamonds become fancy yellows, prized for their rarity.
D to F colourless · G to J near colourless · K to M faint yellow · N to R very light yellow · S to Z light yellow
Most La Myra diamonds are graded G or H, near colourless and white to the naked eye.
Clarity
A diamond's natural fingerprint. Almost every diamond carries tiny traces of its formation: inclusions within the stone and blemishes on its surface. Clarity grades how visible they are:
FL flawless · IF internally flawless · VVS1 and VVS2 very, very slightly included · VS1 and VS2 very slightly included · SI1 and SI2 slightly included · I1, I2 and I3 included
Many inclusions are invisible without magnification. What matters most is that a diamond is eye clean, with nothing to distract from its brilliance, which is why we always suggest looking at each stone rather than choosing by grade alone.
Carat
Weight, not size. The word carat comes from the carob seed, once used across the Mediterranean to weigh precious stones because its weight was remarkably consistent. Today one carat equals 0.2 grams, so five carats weigh exactly one gram.
Large diamonds are found far less often than small ones, so the price rises much faster than the weight. But carat alone never tells the whole story: a large stone with a poor cut can look duller than a smaller one cut beautifully.
"Big girls need big diamonds."
Elizabeth Taylor
Carat to Millimetres, by Shape
An estimate of how each diamond shape measures face up at common carat weights.
How the 4Cs Work Together
No single C makes a beautiful diamond. The eye sees the stone as a whole, so the four qualities have to be read together. If you are choosing, this is the order we suggest:
- Cut, the most important. It decides brilliance and fire, so give it priority, even if it means compromising elsewhere.
- Colour, the stone should look white to the naked eye, with no tint interfering with its light.
- Clarity, choose a diamond that is eye clean. Inclusions you cannot see do not take away from its beauty.
- Carat, choose the size that feels right, and remember that brilliance will always outshine weight.
A diamond is a precious whole. If you would like help finding the right balance for you, we would be glad to look at stones together in Zürich.