Often the object of crazy dreams and unremitting desire diamonds are the hardest and the most brilliant precious stones known, even though their composition is the simplest imaginable. In fact they are crystalline carbons. Diamond has a high fusing point : no less than 3700 ° !

Nothing is easier than check the authenticity of a diamond, as it scratches all other bodies. Its intrinsic value is therefore a very real, as evidenced by its multiple industrial applications.

 
Diamond is a rare commodity, as no more than 350 tones of it have been produced throughout history. This stone is difficult to produce, as one needs to extract and process it from more than 250 tones of minerals to obtain a 1 carat cut jewel (0.20 g).

The world’s main diamond producers are, in descending order : Australia (33%), the Democratic republic of Congo (23%), Botswana (15%), Russia (14%) and South Africa (11%). The main diamond cutting centers are India, Israel, Belgium (Antwerp) and the US (New York).

 
The beauty, the brilliance and the attraction of diamonds are ineffable. The brilliance, the shine and the ‘flame’ of diamonds comes from the quality of the cutting. The round brilliant is the most frequent one, but there are also oval cuts, French cuts, heart cuts and pear-shaped cuts. Throughout the ages there have been many successive modes. Today one frequently sees more rectangular shapes, like the emerald cut or the baguette cut.

 
Diamond purity is relative, as all stones contain impurities of crystallization idiosyncrasies. Usually such inclusions are hardly visible to the naked eye. Inclusions are not faults: they are nature’s imprints. This makes every diamond unique. Diamonds come in all colours, but most of them have a colour ranging from yellow to brown, or some very specimens do not have any colour at all.

 
Some of the rarest diamonds reach unbelievable values, even though they are clearly coloured. There are green, red, blue or amber diamonds.

The definitions below and them correspondences to the GIA have been approved on the 9th of march 1977 by the CIBJO, HRD, IDMA and WFDB.