History

400 years B.C.

The first written records about diamonds are over 2,400 years old. A Sanskrit accounting book reveals that traders used diamonds as an everyday commodity in India. People discovered the oldest diamonds in the delta of the Golconda River in south central India. This land was also for a long time the cradle of the so-called alluvial diamonds.
The property of rulers and rich people, they were kept in their rough state and beautiful, flawless crystals were highly valued. Diamonds also enjoyed great popularity as talismans due to their exceptional hardness and other superb features. They were a symbol of courage and virility, i.e. purely male characteristics.

The mystical power of diamonds was discovered in ancient Egypt, where wearing diamonds on the fourth finger of the left hand was to ensure that Vena Amoris or the “vein of love” would lead from the fingers directly to the heart. Dusting one’s fingertips with diamond powder was supposedly a very effective way of binding one’s love to eternity.

It was probably Alexander the Great who first brought diamonds to Europe. At first, they were considered a mysterious rarity, to which magical and healing properties were attributed. It is said that when Alexander the Great arrived at the Valley of the Diamonds, he saw its bottom strewn with precious stones, guarded by giant serpents with a deadly stare. But Alexander outwitted the serpents and took their diamonds. In ancient Greece, people considered diamonds to be “tears of the gods that fell to earth”. To emphasise the hardness of diamond, they called the material “adamas”, meaning invincible. Sixty years before Christ, Pliny the Elder writes about diamonds in his Natural History. 
 
Until the 13th century

The first uncut diamond appeared in Rome sometime between the 1st and 3rd century. The diamond cutting process has been kept secret for a long time. Age-long taboos surrounding the cutting and shaping of “adamas” or diamonds may have been connected to practical problems and superstitions, given the difficulty in cutting this hard stone. The stones were used as decorative objects in their natural, octagonal shape, with only minor cosmetic cleaning and polishing.

In records from the 13th century, the explorer Marco Polo describes Ormus as the main Persian diamond market, while Venice was the main market and the centre of diamonds in the West. From the beginning of the 13th century, cities from all over Europe established trading relationships with Venetian merchants.
 
14th century

It was not until the 14th century that the clear octahedrons were polished on a wooden or copper mat covered with diamond grit. Such a method had previously been used to treat other gemstones and ivory. However, in the case of diamonds it was a very lengthy process. In 1375, the first guild of diamond cutters and polishers was founded in Nuremberg, Germany. The first major development in diamond cutting came with the “Point Cut” during the latter half of the 14th century. The Point Cut follows the natural shape of the octahedral rough diamond crystal, eliminating some waste in the cutting process.

During this period, cutters took advantage of the natural cleavage planes in rough diamond, which had distinct advantages when it came to cutting nature’s hardest gem. The cut cleaved the rough stone into smaller stones that were close to the approximate final sought-after shape. Cleaving was accomplished by striking the stone in just the right spot with a chisel and mallet. This was a risky business because if the right point was not struck the stone would shatter.
Once the rough diamond was cleaved into the approximate desired shape, it was then subjected to a slow process called bruting, in which the stone was repeatedly struck against another diamond. From the end of the 14th century, Antwerp became the global centre of the diamond trade. Diamond is a perfect symbol of an eternal bond. This tradition of endless love has been maintained for centuries. 
 
15th century

Since the 15th century, processing techniques have continued to improve; from that time, irregular diamond crystals started to be split by cleaving. However, the shape of the original rough material was still respected during cutting. Pyramid-shaped diamonds were set in rings. The main purpose of the treatment was to remove irregularities and defects on the diamond’s surface. Samples of such stones have been found in fragments of jewellery and old ceramics.

In 1475, the concept of creating absolute symmetry in the placement of facets on the stone was introduced by Lodewyk van Bercken, a Flemish stone polisher from Antwerp, Belgium. He did this by means of a revolutionary instrument called a scaif. The scaif used a rotating polishing wheel infused with a mixture of olive oil and diamond grit (like today’s ‘Facetron’). This ingenious machine was able to grind off every unwanted element on the stone’s surface.
The Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold (1433–1477) was so impressed by this “perfect cut” that he became van Bercken’s patron and paid him a handsome sum of 3,000 ducats for three perfectly cut diamonds. This created the profession of “diamond cutter”. The invention of grinding on a steel pad covered with diamond grit gave cutters more possibilities for working stones; at the end of the 15th century, ‘table’ cuts appeared in the shapes of a rhombus, square, rectangle or rosette.

The first mention of giving a diamond as a unique symbol of love also comes from this period. The tradition began in 1477 with Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, when he gave a diamond engagement ring to Mary of Burgundy. Since then, the tradition of diamond engagement rings has spread worldwide, from aristocratic families to the families of wealthy industrialists, and in the last century also to the families of “ordinary mortals”. 
 
16th century

In the 16th century, the cutter Giacomo Tagliacarne and the Renaissance jeweller Giovanni delle Corniole further refined the art of faceted gem cutting. They introduced a new type of cut known as a rose or rosette. The rose was popular for more than a century, since it produced a higher amount of gloss compared to the previous pear-shaped cut and reduced weight losses during the cutting process. The disadvantage was that the gem had to be ground a lot to reduce light losses, and yet still did not generate enough fire. These limitations probably led ultimately to the invention of the brilliant cut.

In the Golden Age at the end of the 16th century, the diamond trade was mainly in the hands of Portuguese Jews and Italian traders, after the explorer Vasco de Gama discovered a direct sea route to India (1498). At that time, the centre of trade moved from Venice to Lisbon.
 
17th century

In the 17th century, the era of cutting various shapes began. Diamonds were cut like ovals, tear drops, marquises and in many other shapes. Craftsmen came from Antwerp, where they worked on the top floors of houses, where the light was best.

The French jewellery dealer Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689) was one of the early pioneers of the European diamond trade in India. Although born in Paris, his ancestors were from Antwerp in Belgium. In his book “Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier” he documented many historically significant diamond cuts in India’s history.
The first European owner of the Florentine Diamond was believed to be the Duke of Burgundy (in the mid 1400s). Eventually, it passed into the hands of the Medici family. Jean Baptiste Tavernier captured the stone cut in a drawing from 1657, when the diamond was in the collection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The last known photo of the Florentine Diamond was from the end of the 1800s, when it was set in ornaments on the Crown Jewels of the Habsburgs.

FIRST BRILLIANT CUT

The first ‘brilliant’ cut was introduced in the 17th century and is largely credited to the extraordinary nuncio or ambassador to the French court, Cardinal Mazarin. This cardinal was born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino and had a lifelong passion for precious stones. The first brilliant cut diamonds were known as “Mazarins” or double-cut; they had 17 facets on the stone’s crown. In the same century, a Venetian polisher named Vincent Peruzzi introduced a new type of cutting when he increased the number of crown facets from 17 to 33.

Ownership of the well-known Koh-i-Noor diamond passed from the Sultan to the Persian Prince Aurangzeb sometime in the mid-17th century. When in possession of Aurangzeb, the stone was accidentally cut down from its original 793 carats to a modest 186 carats, due to the failure of a gemstone cutter.

In the mid-17th century, the French ambassador to Turkey, Nicholas Harlai, Signeur de Sancy, bought a 55-carat pear-shaped diamond and gave the gem his name. The Sancy diamond was then sold to Cardinal Mazarin, later to the Russian Prince Anatoly Demidoff in the 19th century and then to William Waldorf Astor at the beginning of the 20th century.

18th century 

In the 18th century diamonds were cut in the Mazarin or Peruzzi fashion, i.e. in the shape of small cushions rather than round or rosette shapes. Squares and rectangles were cut first, then corners were rounded off. These “cushion” cuts are known today as old mine cut diamonds.

By the end of the 18th century Indian mines had been depleted, but despite the discovery of the first mines in Brazil in the second half of the 18th century, the prosperity of Antwerp was never restored.
 
19th century 

The Koh-i-Noor changed owners several times. When its owner Shah Shuja was overthrown in 1810, he sought refuge in Lahore and took his diamond with him. Shah Shuja and the Koh-i-Noor remained under the protection of the Maharaja of Punjab, Ranjit Singh, until the Maharaja’s death. Then the Punjab came under British control. The Koh-i-Noor remained in Lahore, owned by the British Treasury until 1848 when, under the terms of the “Treaty of Lahore”, the British East India Company transported the gem to England.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, Empress of India, the Koh-i-Noor was again re-cut to 105 carats in 1851. The two best diamond cutters from Amsterdam used a steam cutting blade and needed 38 days to complete the work. Now the diamond is in the Tower of London, where it is set in the crown of the Queen Elizabeth .
 
20th century 

Already in the second half of the 19th century, after extensive experimentation, Henry Morse came up with the first modern brilliant cut in the United States, that was later improved, mathematically justified and described by Marcel Tolkowsky in 1919, who is now considered the inventor of the modern round brilliant cut. The modern brilliant cut consists of 58 facets. There are 33 facets available on the crown and 25 on the pavilion. In recent decades, long girdles are cut that can have 32, 64, 80 or 96 facets.

On 25 June 1905, Frederick Wells, manager of the Premier Diamond Mining Company, found the largest rough diamond in the world at the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa. Christened the “Cullinan”, it weighed 3,106.75 carats, or 621.35 g. The largest polished diamond is the “Great Star of Africa”, with 530.2 carats.

De Beers – the first diamond cartel. In 1871, the De Beers brothers, owners of a small farm in Kimberley, gave permission to Dutch diamond hunters to explore their estate. It turned out to be abundant with diamonds. This news spread like wildfire and the farm was besieged by treasure hunters.

The De Beers brothers sold their farm and moved away. Among the most ambitious prospectors were a few Englishmen: Cecil J. Rhodeand the Barnato brothers, Harry and Barney. They gradually bought up one concession after another until they became the owners of most of the mines in Kimberley. In 1888, they established De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, a forerunner of the company that still plays a very important role in the diamond market.

The company De Beers has a very complex system of numerous cross-owned companies that span the entire industry – from buying raw materials from their own mines and the mines of other mining companies, through processing to sale (the Diamond Producers Association, which owns the individual mines of De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. Other subsidiaries are the Diamond Corporation, which negotiates contracts with diamond mines, De Beers Centenary AG, the Central Selling Organisation and others).

It is De Beers Centenary which owns the long-term rights, secured by contracts, to buy rough diamonds from mines in other countries. In addition, it has interests in more than 1,300 South African and international companies. In this way, until 2001, De Beers controlled the global market, including the production of the largest mining company Alrosa. However, the depletion of South African mines and the opening of other mines in Russia, Canada and Australia have gradually meant that De Beers has lost control of the entire market, and officially they abandoned their efforts to do so in 2001. Nonetheless, it is still the largest diamond trader in the market.

 
 
Zdroje: AllAboutGemstones.com