Black diamonds are very rare and it is difficult to come by stones of the exact same size or cut to be used on jewellery requiring symmetrical or identical placement of the stones.

What makes black diamonds so special is their colour – owing to their black or very dark colour, they do not reflect light and thus do not “sparkle”. This may be seen as a drawback by some, but if you really want to stand out among the crowd, a piece of black diamond jewellery can really set you apart.

Natural versus treated black diamonds
Most black diamonds you will encounter will most likely be enhanced. Enhanced black diamonds are genuine diamonds that are treated so their colour will appear black. The reason for this is that natural black diamonds are extremely rare and very difficult to cut. Remember that “treated” black diamond does not equal artificial – this is still a genuine diamond. When shopping for treated black diamonds however, make sure you are dealing with a reputable jewellery seller.

Black Diamond Engagements Rings and Jewellery
Using black diamonds in jewellery, and particularly in engagement rings or even wedding bands is becoming a popular trend. This is particularly true for jewellery intended for men, who naturally see typical white diamonds to be too feminine to be worn by them. On the other hand, black diamond rings can easily be sported by men and women.

Black diamonds stand out particularly when set in silver-coloured precious metals such as white gold or platinum. Combining black diamonds with traditional whites often brings out the beauty of dark-coloured stones and truly sets the piece apart.

Black-diamond engagement ring is something clearly not typical – if you decide to present your loved one with a black-diamond piece, play it safe and try to find out (unsuspectingly) beforehand whether this fits his/her personal style.

Legend asserts that possessing the Black Orlov diamond brings a curse of death upon the owner. The jewel’s curse supposedly began when it was stolen by a monk from a Hindu shrine in southern India. Lore says this cursed all future owners of the precious stone to a violent death. In 1947, Princess Nadia Vyegin-Orlov and Princess Leonila Galitsine-Bariatinsky, both former owners of the Black Orlov, leapt to their deaths in apparent suicides.

Fifteen years earlier, J.W. Paris, the diamond dealer who previously imported the stone to the United States, had jumped to his death from one of New York’s skyscrapers shortly after concluding the sale of the jewel.
Hoping to escape the curse, the 195 carat stone was divided into three separate stones and the Black Orlov is a 67.5 carat stone which is set in a 108-diamond brooch suspended from a 124-diamond necklace. And has since been owned by a succession of private owners, all of whom seem to have escaped the curse.

The stone has been exhibited widely, including at the American Museum of Natural History in 1951, the Wonderful World of Fine Jewelry & Gifts at the 1964 Texas State Fair, Dallas, and the Diamond Pavilion in Johannesburg in 1967.

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World of diamonds is not only full of brightness, nobility and honour. It is also world of blood, poverty, hunger and disease.

Most of the world’s production of diamonds comes from Africa, poor African states are forced to export raw diamonds to other contry where diamonds are cut, because diamond trade and diamond cutting is strictly limited to a few locations, and a single company—De Beers—controls a significant proportion of the trade in diamonds.

The De Beers company, as the world’s largest diamond miner holds a clearly dominant position in the industry, and has done so since soon after its founding in 1888 by the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. De Beers used its monopoly position to establish strict price controls, and market diamonds directly to consumers in world markets.

So african states, chief exporters of diamonds get a less share on diamonds profit than expected. Bloody diamonds (also called a conflict diamond, dirty diamond or a war diamond) are diamonds which are traded by rebel groups during conflict to fund their war efforts.

Although the United Nations first identified the conflict diamond issue in 1998 as a source of funding for war, it was the diamond industry that took steps to address the conflict diamond issue by convening a meeting to plan a method by which the trade in conflict diamonds could be halted, and buyers of diamonds could be assured that their diamonds have not contributed to violence.

Conflict free diamonds

A conflict-free diamond is a diamond whose profits aren’t used to fund any wars and they are produced and mined under ethical conditions.

Only diamonds that are certified and can be traced from the mine to the consumer are conflict-free diamonds. Conflict diamonds are still being sold today into the international diamond market as clean diamonds.

When you’re looking to buy a diamond consider a situation not only in your wallet, but be aware of situation if Africa, where thousands of innocent children are forced to digg diamonds in terrific condition.

Buying a diamond is not only beauty, but it’s also a way to change the world.

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The De Beers Millennium Star is, at 203.04 carat (40.608 g), the world’s second largest known top color (D), internally and externally flawless, pear-shaped diamond.

The diamond was discovered in the Mbuji-Mayi district of Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1990 in alluvial deposits; uncut it was 777 carat (155.4 g). It was purchased by De Beers. It took over three years for workers of the Steinmetz Diamond Group to produce the classic pear form; the actual cutting was done using lasers.

It was first displayed in October 1999 as the centerpiece of the De Beers Millennium diamond collection. The collection also includes eleven blue diamonds totaling 118 carats (23.6 g) and The Heart of Eternity. They were displayed at London’s Millennium Dome over 2000.

The largest cut white (D) diamond by weight is the 1991 heart-shaped 273.85 carat (54.77 g) Centenary Diamond.

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The Vivid Pink is the largest potentially flawless fancy-vivid-pink diamond ever offered for sale at auction.

Property of a private collector and set in a ring by renowned jeweler Laurence Graff, the diamond is expected to fetch HK $39-$55 million (about $5 million-$7 million).

Christie’s fall Hong Kong sale is set for Dec. 1.

Prior to the sale, The Vivid Pink will be on display in the following cities: New York, Oct. 17-20 at Christie’s Rockefeller Center Galleries; Singapore, Oct. 29-30 (by appointment only); Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 11-12 (by appointment only); Geneva, Nov. 15-17 at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues; Taipei, Taiwan, Nov. 21-22 at the Fubon Life Assurance Building; and Hong Kong, Nov. 27-Dec. 1 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The current record for a pink diamond sold at auction is $7.4 million, fetched by a 19.66-carat rectangular-cut fancy-pink diamond with VVS2 clarity, which sold at Christie’s Geneva in November 1994.

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Charles Wyndham, founder of PolishedPrices, a leading index of wholesale diamond prices, said on Friday prices of larger, rare, near-flawless gemstones had shot up by roughly 200 percent over the past 18 months.

The surge has been driven by increased interest from a growing number of multi-millionaires in emerging markets, a shortage of rough diamonds, and the dollar’s slide, he said.

Diamond jewellery prices have risen in tune with wholesale diamond prices, but fine jewellers like Graff and Cartier say demand is holding up well for top-tier diamond jewellery in upscale retail outlets on Bond Street in London and in New York.

“Sales are doing well — Cartier is a high-end business and, therefore, better protected,” Frederic de Narp, president and CEO, Cartier North America, told Reuters in June. He gave no figures. Cartier is a subsidiary of Swiss luxury goods maker Richemont.

High-end jewellers in London and New York are reporting increased traffic from foreign visitors, especially from commodity-rich countries in the Middle East, South America and eastern Europe.

The wholesale price of internally flawless 3-carat round polished diamonds has jumped to $100,000 per carat as of June 1, from $55,000 last December, according to PolishedPrices.com.

The world’s rarest polished gemstones have experienced staggering price rises in recent months. Wyndham estimated 13-carat perfect diamonds now to be worth in excess of $200,000 per carat wholesale, an all-time peak.

“If you have a perfect stone, you will get unbelievable prices,” Wyndham said.

The main PolishedPrices index, which incorporates a range of diamond categories, stood at 136.3 points this week, 6 percent above the level this time last year.

“There are signs that the high prices being paid for fine qualities are beginning to trickle down into the commercial categories, with commercial one carat diamonds also setting an all-time high,” PolishedPrices said in its latest market report.

Both the fine and commercial indices are now showing double digit growth since the start of the year.

The rapid upward momentum in diamond prices cannot carry on at the present rate.

“It is impossible for this rate of increase to be maintained,” said Wyndham, who has been in the diamond industry for over 30 years.

He was a director of the CSO, De Beers’ selling arm, before setting up his own diamond businesses in 1995.

While high net-worth individuals want to possess the most exquisite gemstones, the picture is far less buoyant for low-tier gem-quality diamonds, Wyndham said.

The sharp slowdown of the U.S. economy, the world’s leading market for diamond jewellery, has hit demand for low-end diamonds and bolstered inventories.

“As long as you’re talking about good quality diamonds, the scene has been pretty positive. However, commercial, lower end (gem-quality) diamonds have had a very rough time,” he said.

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The space diamond is virtually an enormous chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 kilometers in diameter. The stone is located at a distance of 50 light years from Earth, in the Constellation Centaurus.

Scientists believe that the diamond is the heart of an extinct star that used to shine like the Sun. Astronomers have already dubbed the space diamond as Lucy in a tribute to the Beatles song ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.’

“You would need a jeweler’s loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond!” says astronomer Travis Metcalfe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who leads a team of researchers that discovered the giant gem.

The cosmic stone completely outclasses all diamonds that have ever been found on Earth. The largest diamond weighing 546 carats was found in South African Republic. The diamond, The Star of Africa, resides in the Crown Jewels of England. The Star of Africa was cut from the largest diamond ever found on Earth, a 3,100-carat gem.

Lucy, also known as BPM 37093, is actually a crystallized white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases.

The white dwarf is not only radiant but also harmonious. It rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations. “By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth. We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy’s largest diamond,” says Metcalfe.

Astronomers say that our Sun will die in five billion years and become a white dwarf too. About two billion years after it will turn into a similar diamond that will continue to sparkle in the center of the solar system forever.

The jewel — the largest top-quality, brilliant-cut white diamond ever to appear at auction — had been valued by Sotheby’s at between $13.3 million and $17.8 million.

Marciano’s winning bid, made by telephone, came to $16,189,769 including the buyer’s premium. It was just short of the all-time auction record for a stone or piece of jewelry, a record held by the same Sotheby’s branch in Geneva for a 100.1-carat diamond that fetched $16.5 million in 1995.

“In my 32-year career, this stone ranks among the most beautiful diamonds I have ever seen,” said David Bennett, the auction house’s chairman of jewelry for Europe and the Middle East. He called it a “magnificent and unique stone.”

The diamond has received the highest possible grading, Sotheby’s said. It is D-color, or finest white, has flawless clarity, and its cut, polish and symmetry have all been graded excellent, it said.

The New York-based company is hoping the “Magnificent Jewels” sale at Geneva’s historic Beau Rivage hotel will help it bounce back from the disheartening results of its Impressionist and Modern Art auction, which sent its stock tumbling.

The sale last week fetched $269.7 million, well short of estimates, and led some analysts to speculate whether the flight from risk currently gripping financial markets may be spilling over into the art world.

The company announced that it lost $14.6 million by purchasing paintings that failed to sell.

The white diamond already has been showcased in Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Rome, Los Angeles, London, Dubai and Bahrain. The auction Wednesday also featured other diamonds, colored stones and gems from the world’s leading jewelers.

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