Smithsonian magazine on synthetic diamonds that fool experts

Here's a great article from the Smithsonian about synthetic diamonds, which are getting better all the time. The De Beers cartel is none too pleased to have its empire threatened by upstarts like Apollo Diamond.

"This is a virtual diamond mine," says Apollo CEO Bryant Linares when I arrive at the company's secret location, where diamonds are made. "If we were in Africa, we'd have barbed wire, security guards and watch towers. We can't do that in Massachusetts." Apollo's directors worry about theft, corporate spies and their own safety. When Linares was at a diamond conference a few years ago, he says, a man he declines to describe slipped behind him as he was walking out of a hotel meeting room and said someone from a natural diamond company just might put a bullet in his head. "It was a scary moment," Linares recalls.
Bryant's father, Robert Linares, working with a collaborator who became a co-founder of Apollo, invented the company's diamond-growing technique. Robert escorts me into one of the company's production rooms, a long hall filled with four refrigerator-size chambers bristling with tubes and gauges. As technicians walk past in scrubs and lab coats, I glance inside the porthole window of one of the machines. A kryptonite-green cloud fills the top of the chamber; at the bottom are 16 button-size disks, each one glowing a hazy pink. "Doesn't look like anything, right?" Robert says. "But they will be half-caraters in a few weeks."

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Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Takuan

the historic appeal of gemstones has always been how many died to get them or were killed for possession of them. There is a reason they are featured in crowns.
Sister Y

Takuan’s comment at #20 is right on. Also, Aluxeterna suggests buying an “estate diamond” (used diamond) – and that’s right on, too. From the famous 1982 article by Edward Jay Epstein in The Atlantic, “Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?” (worth reading in its entirety, detailing the marketing manipulations undertaken by De Beers to basically inflate diamond prices):

In developing a strategy for De Beers in 1953, N. W. Ayer said: “In our opinion old diamonds are in ‘safe hands’ only when widely dispersed and held by individuals as cherished possessions valued far above their market price.” As far as De Beers and N. W. Ayer were concerned, “safe hands” belonged to those women psychologically conditioned never to sell their diamonds. This conditioning could not be attained solely by placing advertisements in magazines. The diamond-holding public, which includes people who inherit diamonds, had to remain convinced that diamonds retained their monetary value. If it saw price fluctuations in the diamond market and attempted to dispose of diamonds to take advantage of changing prices, the retail market would become chaotic. It was therefore essential that De Beers maintain at least the illusion of price stability.
SamSam

I love that the cartels imply there’s something less worthy about a flawless stone simply because it came from a lab instead of a mine.

But there is something less worthy about a diamond grown in a lab, if by “less worthy” you mean “worth less.” Diamonds, except for their usage in industrial applications, have only the value we ascribe to them. They are inherently valueless in and of themselves. Likewise gold is valueless.

Diamonds and gold both have their value enormously inflated simply because they are so rare. Once creating diamonds in a lab is as easy as creating plastic, they will lose almost all their value (except, again, in industrial applications).

Why do you buy your fiancee a diamond ring? NOT because it’s shiney and sparkly, but because it’s worth 3 months salary.

Apollo’s diamonds may cost as much as De Beer’s diamonds now, but that’s 1) because the process is in its infancy, and 2) because their only real competition is real, expensive diamonds. Once more competition emerges for low-cost, lab-created diamonds, their value will fall steeply — and people will stop buying them.

However, if mined diamonds can be distinguished from lab diamonds, THEN the mined diamonds will retain their inflated value, because they will remain just as rare as before. You can be sure that De Beer is working on processes for telling the diamonds apart, so that they can safely put “100% African Diamond” on their rocks. And people will still buy them at 10x the price of the lab diamonds, because their value is still set by their rarity.
Tenn

A wentletrap is structurally spectacular compared to a diamond.

Thank you for adding that fine word to my vocabulary. ‘Wentletrap’, a word that would have aided me on many a day- “Dear cousin! Let us seek out spirally, twisty, pointy-end shells post the breaking tide!” would have sounded better, at least.
SamSam

Agree with all those saying how is it fooling anyone, a diamond is a diamond is a diamond

I disagree. Diamonds are used for engagement rings precisely because they are supposed to cost 3 months salary (or whatever). If a lab-diamond can be produced for 10 bucks, lab-diamonds are not going to become the engagement ring of choice anytime soon.

A diamond is worth only the value that is ascribed to it (excepting industrial applications). A mined diamond is worth so ridiculously much only because of its rarity. Take away the rarity, and you’ve got a pretty sparkly thing worth ten bucks.

So, given that the implication of the article is that it is still possible to distinguish lab diamonds from mined diamonds, you can be sure that mined diamonds are going to retain their high value. And you can also be sure that De Beer scientists are working as hard as possible to come up with fool-proof tests that can distinguish their mined diamonds from these lab diamonds. Why? Because people will continue to pay exorbitant prices from real, rare diamonds.
BaS

@ “I’m pretty sure the original Wired article found a diamond expert that eventually found a difference.”

In the wired article, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html , they were able to tell “a half-carat light yellow Gemesis diamond” was synthetic when put in a “Fourier transform infrared spectrometer,” but not with the 10X loupe.

However Gemesis diamonds are made differently than Apollo ones,

(also from the Wired article) “The diamond industry is in fact even more concerned about gems made using chemical vapor deposition than it is about Gemesis stones, though Gemesis poses a more immediate threat. The promise of CVD is that it produces extremely pure crystal. Gemesis diamonds grow in a metal solvent, and tiny particles of those metals get caught in the diamond lattice as it grows. CVD diamond precipitates as nearly 100 percent pure diamond and therefore may not be discernible from naturals, no matter how advanced the detection equipment….”

[for the Apollo diamond, same guy testing] “He admits to staying up almost all night scrutinizing the stones. ‘I think I can identify it,’ he says hopefully. ‘It’s too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless.’”
Cowicide

How many of you that are worried and disgusted about blood diamonds are using blood oil right now in copious amounts every single day I wonder?
Takuan

yeah,but it’s a lot easier to give up diamonds
Takuan

OK, we’ll add a few impurities
iguanoid

Its about time!
Takuan

why hasn’t the insurance industry moved in on the diamond mob? The humblest object associated with the moment of kindling love and pledged troth of fortunes has more meaning the biggest diamond. Save in cash value. If someone wished to materially provide for their mate after their own death (or the symbolic death of the end of a relationship), why not just buy a fat policy?
Takuan

LISTEN to the lyrics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0FDGnAIWpk
prion

#33

You may fight where you can, when you can. It sure is easy to avoid Blood Diamonds. It is much more difficult to avoid Blood Oil.

I’m sure even you can tell which one is more difficult to stop supporting. Even if you don’t drive a car… ever sent a letter or parcel in the mail? Have you purchased goods at a retail store? Had to use the Blood Oil anyways didn’t you? Our entire infrastructure runs on it. Unless you live on a hippie commune or Luddite reservation or the like, then nevermind, you’re better than us all.
Cowicide

#34 posted by Takuan

yeah,but it’s a lot easier to give up diamonds

I see your point, but I guess what I’m saying is… how many more people are enslaved and killed by consuming oil and buying oil-based products every day? And, therefore, don’t we have much, much bigger fish to fry?

Even though I welcome our new fake diamond overlords, I also have clients in the real diamond industry, so I openly admit I’m biased here.

But, aside from my bias, I’m just not sure buying diamonds is any worse for the world than buying a bunch of other plastic products and shit from Walmart either.

It seems to me the overwhelming problem we have is our incredibly evil, greedy oil consumption. Even if you take global warming out of it, it’s still a very nasty habit for mankind and is quite the killer.

I dunno, which is much, much worse? Buying one diamond for a marriage or a lifetime of buying oil-based products from Walmart and driving a gas guzzler everywhere?
teapot7

morehumanthanhuman at #26 writes:

> It is also worth noting that if a fast process for synthesizing diamond could be discovered, it might be cheaper to make things out of diamond than plastic.

Giving us a world of virtually indestructable mounds of diamond garbage – dimaond highchairs and spoons and chopsticks and fenceposts and shoe-heels. Somewhere J.G. Ballard is nodding sagely.
Antinous

When you say experts, do you mean brides-to-be?
prion

#35

Thats a great idea. Unfortunately it will never be as popular because:

1) You don’t have to take off your insurance policy to do the dishes.

2) You’re wedding might be more like a Nationwide TV commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBCAg-RrQvg

… ok that’s all i’ve got. Isn’t the “traditional” first anniversary gift paper? What if that paper was an insurance policy? I betcha tha missus will appreciate that :)
prion

Cowicide #38

I actually agree with you. Your recent post put it in perspective. But here we are talking about diamonds…
Registrado

From the article: “If we were in Africa, we’d have barbed wire, security guards and watch towers. We can’t do that in Massachusetts.”

Not outside of airports, anyway.
thatbob

It’s good to read an update on this technology. I first read about it in Wired maybe 5 years back. Maybe by the time they’re commercially available I’ll have a robot girlfriend I can propose to!
Rajio

It’s just carbon yo. Oh wait, no it’s not. Its a physical manifestation of love. I forgot.

Silly me. :D
bibulb

There was an article several years ago in Wired about this same situation.

(And everyone cites Stephenson, natch.)
Antinous

I’m just fascinated with the idea of heirloom jewelry that is (or at least you can say is) actually made out of your ancestors.)

Make a tennis bracelet out of Grandma’s metacarpals. It’ll be easier to prove its provenance than that of a cremains diamond.
Cowicide

#40 posted by prion

I actually agree with you. Your recent post put it in perspective. But here we are talking about diamonds…

Yes, yes… I’ll shut up about oil, etc… I just had to say something so the De Beers people don’t put a bullet in my head. I’m a diamond puppet.
BadKittyM

I didn’t clarify my earlier statement – my bad. Apollo has no choice really, as far as not trying to put DeBeers out of business…and exactly for the reasons more fully expounded upon by others.

They would not be allowed to. I doubt they’d even have time to think “Maybe this was a bad ide…”

I’m betting they’ll make far more in the long run, with the technological applications. The very real danger of pissing off DeBeers is probably not remotely worth the effort, especially with so many people buying into the ‘Mined Diamond as Engagement ring’ necessity.

I would have slapped the crap out of my husband if he had spent 3 months salary on a diamond – ANY diamond. I’d rather have that go toward the down payment on a home, or into an IRA for our future. NEVER on jewelry. Shoot, I’d definitely take a set of killer Craftsman power tools over a ring. At least they have real uses, and can be used to create other things. Sparklies don’t draw me, but crafts and creation do.

Of course, this is simply my personal thoughts on the matter, and in no way do I expect others to conform or feel the same. I will admit that the very first time I told my guy that I didn’t like diamonds and would never support that industry 17 years ago, he breathed an enormous sigh of relief. I just wear my Mother’s ring, but not all the time. It might get caught in my power tools.
:-D
Church

So are these the white diamond guys?
manicbassman

how are we to know that they’re not fudging this process and really using it as a decoy to launder diamonds that have been smuggled out of Africa?
zikzak

This is especially good news because it stands to destroy an industry that has been responsible for a huge amount of bloodshed and war.

When diamonds can be grown “locally” in vats, maybe there will be no reason to fight vicious wars in Africa over diamond mines, and use slave or pseudo-slave labor to extract them.

I guess there are still a lot of other valuable resources to fuel wars in Africa, though. Coltan is another big one, a key ingredient in most consumer electronics.
AaronZ

I just looked at Apollo Diamond’s website, and they have some jewelery for sale online. It’s comperable in price to regular (mined) diamonds.

You might be avoiding the DeBeers monopoly, or comfortable in the knowledge that it’s 100% conflict free, but you’re not going to actually save any $$.
If anything, it seems like Apollo is trading on the DeBeers-set prices to inflate their own. Ultimately acomplishing nothing in the overall market other than becoming another sales source.
BaS

BadKittyM-”I would have slapped the crap out of my husband if he had spent 3 months salary on a diamond – ANY diamond. I’d rather have that go toward the down payment on a home, or into an IRA for our future. NEVER on jewelry.”

^_^ I said almost that entire quote to my husband about a year before he proposed to me.
BadKittyM

The point is to NOT put the mined diamond industries out of business (It’s mentioned in the article). They don’t want to ruin anyone, and yes – since their process is expensive, they need to make a profit in order to stay in business. It will take a number of years, but slowly the price will drop. They seem to not wish to ruin anyone, including themselves.

I got the impression they are far more interested in the technical aspects and industrial applications, than becoming jewelers. Let Du Beers have their monoton- er, monopoly on diamonds (boring, cold things that they are) for suckers. Each ought to come with a handy pre-nup. Or, do as my friend Jim once said to his son.
“If you ever feel the desire to get married, save yourself time and stress. Just find a woman you don’t like and buy her a house.”
ROSSINDETROIT

Giving us a world of virtually indestructable(sic) mounds of diamond garbage
Diamond burns. Get it hot enough and the carbon combines with oxygen. It’s also somewhat brittle. It is very hard and resistant to abrasion but it’s rigid and will crack when enough force is applied. It’s common for gem diamonds to be chipped by impacts that the wearer never notices.
ggm

“fool experts”

um. if you make an “x” which identical to an “x” made in nature, in what sense is anyone ‘fooled’ ?

I have two books on my shelf on this, both at least 20 years old. How about http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diamond-Invention-aka-Death/dp/0091476909 “the death of the diamond” which discussed this is much detail. long long ago.

Oh, its about fooling the smithsonian. ok, I get it. the people who said Samuel Langley invented Flying. riiight. Experts.

-G
prom77

I’m reminded of how aluminum used to be the most expensive metal in the world, until extraction technology made it rather trivial to produce in huge quantities. Now look at the sorry shit we make out of it.
ROSSINDETROIT

It takes a few weeks in a machine to grow 16 diamonds of 1/2 ct each? Do you know how small that is? I haven’t read the article yet. I will, though. I worked in high end jewelry retail for 2 years and I’m very interested in seeing the mystique blown off of this most over-marketed of all consumer products.
BTW, the movie Flawless, with Michael Caine and Demi Moore is excellent.
G Jules

@35: Because insurance isn’t romantic, and you can’t put it on your finger and show it off in the office.

Which is a damn shame, IMO, but there you go.
Tweeker

“The point is to NOT put the mined diamond industries out of business (It’s mentioned in the article). They don’t want to ruin anyone, and yes – since their process is expensive, they need to make a profit in order to stay in business. It will take a number of years, but slowly the price will drop. They seem to not wish to ruin anyone, including themselves.”

Merely existing is enough to seriously disrupt a cartel that depends on artificial restricting the supply of diamonds.
bokodasu

I didn’t get an engagement ring, because I think diamonds, as they exist now, are kinda stupid. But if this technology had been, say, 10 years more advanced than it is now 10 years ago when I got married, I’d have myself one of those giant, 100-stone monstrosities. Bling!

(I’m also obsessed with that place that makes diamonds out of your cremains. I’m not convinced that they don’t just give you any old created diamond, but I also don’t care – I’m just fascinated with the idea of heirloom jewelry that is (or at least you can say is) actually made out of your ancestors.)
Daemon

Ah, diamonds. So very full of evil.

Also, boring, boring stones.
Jeff

“I’m picky and only wear diamonds made from the cremains of my former enemies,” he should have replied. “How would you like to end up as a pair of cuff links?”
Aaron

I love that the cartels imply there’s something less worthy about a flawless stone simply because it came from a lab instead of a mine.

Carbon is carbon, folks. If the idea is to have as flawless a stone as possible, it seems like a lab is the way to go.

Better quality plus the assurance people didn’t die to put some bling on your bride’s hand? Sign me up.
alejandrodelloco

There are serious technological possibilities here. You’ve all read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, right?

Also, imagine the funky kinds of shapes you could grow the crystals in. I want a diamond icepick.
fnc

How long until there’s a kiosk in every mall where you press a button and get a cheap hunk of what is ultimately just readily available carbon with which to display your love for the cute girl you met last week?

“Awww, another diamond? You must really have feelings of slight fondness for me.”
Takuan

are the diamonds out of northern Canada relatively blood free?
danegeld

diamond is very hard has a very high thermal conductivity, so it makes the ideal window / optics for thermal imaging systems. You can use it as an efficient heat-sink if you can form it into useful shapes, eg. as a wafer for mounting silicon chips onto.
MarlboroTestMonkey7

“The point is to NOT put the mined diamond industries out of business”, If the tech is there and can be perfected -as any other tech- the mines can and WILL BE replaced. Should we go back to rubber harvesting from trees? Better to move the assigned resources elsewhere.

Serves you right, Leonardo DiCaprio!
Dayv

“synthetic diamonds that fool experts”

Synthetic? Fool?

They’re just as real diamond-y as the ones that come out of the ground, so there’s no fooling to be done. The experts can only say “yep, that’s a diamond” and move the f*** on.

When DeBeers launches a major ad campaign to try to convince people that man made diamonds are somehow less meaningful (expect ceritificates of authenticity and source), we will know that their vile industry is near its much deserved end.
aluxeterna

I hate to shill on the commentboard here, but I did buy an Apollo diamond last year for my (now) fiancee’s engagement ring, and though purchasing was a wee bit difficult, I must say I’m very happy with the purchase. As far as I can tell, these man-made diamonds offer the best of all possible worlds (well, just after “not being expected to impress the in-laws with brainless materialism”). I mean, SRSLY: 1) you’ve got no blood on your hands, 2) you get to tell DeBeers to go fuck themselves, and 3) Maybe some of your wasted engagement-ring purchase price will go into research that will make totally sweet/awesome diamond-based computers someday.

As for “putting DeBeers out of business NOT being the point,” I suspect that they have to say this just to keep a lower profile. I forget if it was in Wired or Atlantic Monthly (both have had excellent articles on the topic before) that I read that some of the cultured diamond company folks were receiving anonymous death threats, but the danger is real. DeBeers is huge, and the cartel’s livelihood depends on all sorts of shady dealings. They cut off the arms of babies, for cripes sake; are they going to let some scientists in a Boston Suburb put them out of business with a diamond-on-demand machine? But clearly a diamond-on-demand machine is precisely what Apollo and the other companies are perfecting.

The sooner, the better.
tfield98

Nice article on how diamonds were marketed:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/198202/diamond
Takuan

or we could all just agree that diamonds don’t really have any value save what we say it is. Create a culture where the traditional suitors gift is a token of something good and sustainable? The skull of a Bush supporter? Those are increasingly rare.
jitrobug

My fiance and I are happy apollo diamond owners/buyers.

The process wasn’t bad – they’ve been super slow in getting any kind of decent website up, but dealing with them over the phone worked out great.

The rocks came with birth certificates, which is cute.

As far as I’m concerned, chemical vapor deposition is WAY cooler than digging.

..and when I bought, the prices were ~20% cheaper than plain ol dug up diamonds.. which, seriously, I would have paid 20% extra.. so fine by me.
aluxeterna

Takuan,

“Relatively blood free” is a good way to put it. Basically they’re fine, blood-wise, though there have been many cases where blood diamonds have made their way through Canadian channels to ‘whitewash’ them. For the record, the Kimberley Process is a complete fucking joke, put in place by the industry itself to avoid serious governmental policing.

The other issue with mined diamonds anywhere on earth, Canada or otherwise, is the absurd environmental costs. How much earth must be mined to get one carat of diamond? One Metric Shitload, to be precise.

If the man-made diamonds aren’t an option, and a diamond indeed you must have, what about an estate diamond? Cheaper than any of the other options (because diamonds are never a good investment, no matter what the mall-jeweler bs-artists say), and nobody/nothing new was harmed in the process. Heck, you might even find a diamond/ring with an interesting history, if you look around a bit…
ROSSINDETROIT

If diamonds really could be made far more cheaply than naturals, I think we’d end up with a 2-tiered market: ‘naturals’ for traditional buyers, with the prices somewhat below current prices, and ‘synthesized’ stones for use where only the sparkle matters.
Having worked 40 hours a week for 2 years with millions of dollars of diamonds I know there’s a big market for that sparkle. A really clean well cut diamond is just gorgeous. If they were down to a couple hundred a ct, you’d see an explosion of uses for synthesized stones. Diamond encrusted eyeglasses, handbags, watches, any accessory that can be bling-ified would be.
aluxeterna

Jitrobug: agreed on all fronts. Once I was able to speak with them by phone, things went much more smoothly. Very straightforward, and with none of the crass “Well, you know, when it comes down to it, it’s all about the rock” bullshit like I got everywhere else.
ROSSINDETROIT

When I was in the diamond selling business 18 months ago all of the designers and vendors were telling us that larger stones of 2ct and up were getting very scarce. Prices were going up correspondingly. I heard figures of over +50% change in 24 months in the size range of 1ct – 3ct. This might be total Bee-Ess, but numerous people have said the present sources of larger rough are mined out after 100 years or more of continuous extraction. It’s true that we did have a harder time getting big stones for clients, and we lost sales. I can’t think of a reason why the suppliers would put the brakes on if they have adequate supplies of rough. Maybe there really is a shortage of quality material developing.
Commenters: If you’re getting ready to say that this is just market manipulation by De Beers, please be prepared to add why you think so (evidence) and what the goal is.
The market might be ripe for a new source of diamonds to develop. Personally, I prefer colored stones. Diamonds can be nice, but aren’t always.
Takuan

a trophy diamond? A gem won from some evil dragon’s lair at great risk and improvement of the earth by slaying of the beast? Cheney’s safe deposit box?
Takuan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfYwIFIbCN0
ROSSINDETROIT

since we don’t have continuous documentation proving that THIS item here in the hand is the same one as THAT item on the insurance list from 1925

Whoever told you that is playing you for a fool. The differences in shape, surface finish and wear between a 1920′s natural stone and a modern synthetic are clearly visible under low magnification. Sometimes to the naked eye. Synthetcs need not be modern. Corundum (ruby, sapphire) has been produced by flame fusion for over 100 years.
morehumanthanhuman

Actually the diamond cartels have great reason to worry the standard enthalpy of formation of diamond is 1.8 kj/mole, not that much in chemistry terms. In comparison the formation of solid sodium chloride releases 411 kj/mole. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_enthalpy_change_of_formation_(data_table)

It is also worth noting that if a fast process for synthesizing diamond could be discovered, it might be cheaper to make things out of diamond than plastic.
eustace

The technological possibilities are the really exciting thing about that article. The quote at the end was not hyperbole. As substrates for electronics the possibilities are tremendous; but so are the possibilities as a small-scale structural material. Let alone as a fabricator vacuum chamber (Neal Stephenson fanboy disclaimer).
BaS

Agree with all those saying how is it fooling anyone, a diamond is a diamond is a diamond, these are just created not mined, it’s not like they’re trying to trick jewlers saying it’s diamond when it’s really CZ.

When my husband bought my engagement ring from Apollo back in 2006 they were in the median range for the cut/carat/clarity/color that the mined diamond rings were selling at. It’s not something for someone looking for a bargin price at the moment, but it is for those who (I’m sure there are more options but these come to mind),(1) think it’s neat and want a man made diamond/are the type who want the newest gadgets, (2) somehow figure they want a “made in america” type thing, or (3)either want a ‘cultured’ diamond or none at all rather than a mined.
mjfgates

I suspect that in thirty years, diamonds will be sold a lot like the way the colored stones are now. You can buy huge, perfect gems– sapphires, rubies, topaz– right off eBay. They’re cheap enough that my eighteen-year-old has a little wooden chest filled with them.. yarrr! Meanwhile, the “real”, mined stones all sell with Certificates Of Authenticity, for just as much money as they used to.

One interesting aspect of that is that my wife’s heirloom jewelry has lost all its value. The pieces were made during the 20s, with perfect, matched sapphires set in white gold– beautiful stuff– but since we don’t have continuous documentation proving that THIS item here in the hand is the same one as THAT item on the insurance list from 1925, jewelers won’t pay more for it than for modern pieces with lab-created stones. Ah, well, she’ll just have to keep wearing it.
exhilaration

The experts can only say “yep, that’s a diamond” and move the f*** on.

I’m pretty sure the original Wired article found a diamond expert that eventually found a difference.
Pipenta

You know, back in the bronze age or whenever, gemstones must have been pretty spectacular. Less so once glass blowing got going.

They sparkle. So what? They have certain industrial applications, but as ornaments they are dull, likewise gold. I can appreciate the skill of the diamond cutter, the artistry of the goldsmith. But it is the design I appreciate more than the material. Pearls are pretty, I suppose, but can’t hold a candle to the intricacies of many a murex shell. A wentletrap is structurally spectacular compared to a diamond. A glittering green tiger beetle in my hand takes my breath away more than any emerald (though part of that may be that it is sinking its mandibles into my flesh).

Diamond, rubies, feh! I never had understood their appeal. Gifted heirloom jewelry, I was always more excited by the settings than the stones. Give me a sparkling wave curling towards the shore, the moon ringed by ice crystals, a field of bluebonnets, a waterfall, spring foliage tender and new.

I hope this company and a dozen others pump out diamonds until people see them as what they are, nice little chunks of rock… period.
anthropomorphictoast

I’m not much on diamonds, but the man-made ones are pretty damn cool. The Life Gems are amazing too…I’m planning on being cremated anyway, but being turned into a diamond would be awesome.
offal

What? No mention of Bruce Roberts of “The Gemstone File” infamy? He was making rubies supposedly back in the 70′s which he leveraged to gain choice bits for his conspiracy opus.