Monday, April 19, 2010

What Are Some Diamond Cuts?

By Alexa Wyrdstone

The most important part of any diamond that you buy is the cut. It could have incredible clarity and color and still look absolutely awful if it was cut poorly. Even the most glorious diamond on earth-the Hope Diamond, would look terrible if someone were to cut it poorly. A quality cut on a diamond not only shows off its natural beauty but really add to it as well.

The cut on a diamond is separated into a few different facets. The first part is the girdle. This is the widest part of the cut diamond. The pavilion is the area bellow the girdle and the facet above the girdle is called the crown. The table is the flat area at the very top of the crown. The crown of the diamond is the part that is most visible.

Many would argue that the most important part of a diamond's cut is its table. This is the largest part of the stone after it has been cut and is also the area where most of the light enters. This is important because the way the table is cut changes the way the gemstone sparkles.

One of the most famous types of cut is the table cut. This is when the table facet of the diamond has been cut so that it is either shaped like a square or a rectangle. In modern times this is considered a fairly rare cut.

This is considered to be a very traditional cut. It was one of the most complicated cuts that could be pulled off in earlier times and because of this just about all jewelry from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries features a table cut.

However, just because a diamond has a table cut into a square doesn't necessarily make it a table cut diamonds. There are other cuts such as the baguette cut or the square cut which have a square top but are noticeably different. With both of these cuts the pavilion facet on the gemstone has parallel edge similar to the sides of a pyramid.

A table cut looks quite a bit different from this because the pavilion facet is cut into gently rounded faces rather than steps. This is probably the reason why the table cut is so popular-it makes the stone really sparkle.

Today, we have a lot of of other cuts we can cut diamonds into. Some would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a jeweler to do, but with computer aided technology we can create incredible works of beauty.

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