Jewellery - Diamonds

Jewelery is one of the oldest of the decorative arts. It answers to the deep human love of intrinsically beautiful materials, to the deep human wish for bodily beautification, and to the superstitious need for reinforcing human powers by things that seem to a savage more lasting and more mysterious than man. We still know how beautiful is virgin gold, though we have forgotten how magical its gleam once showed among the sands of Pactolus; we still find the renames of the places whence Jews aane romantic—Samarqand and Golconda and the Oxus Valley, Brazil and Peru— though the jewels may now come to us from Kimberley by way of Hatton Garden. We still know that though there are dawn clouds and swans' breasts that we can compare with a pearl, there is nothing with which the pearl itself can be compared. Verse-writers no longer stud their lines, as the medieval poets did, with the names of jewels; but even now such phrases as 'a Persian emerald' or 'a Siberian amethyst' have their overtones of poetry, for they bring the romance of distance to what is intrinsically beautiful. We still find that a jewel that has been worn long and often, seems to become the expression of the personality of its wearer, though it is no longer tribal tradition, to protocol of society, or religious devotion that dictates its form and design, but the interplay of fashion, chance and taste. Jewels, indeed, though they may seem alien to an age of austere functionalism, still play a living part in our civilization.

In order to buy diamonds, one should have a good knowledge of the stones and their values, or good judgment in selecting a dealer, and confidence in him. It is owing to the lack of these in transactions in which the public takes part that so many poor stones are sold at unreasonably high prices.

In examining diamonds there are a great many things which befog the judgment of inexperienced buyers. It is impossible to see a diamond at its best in some stores. One must know the light and surroundings to judge the stone properly. In other stores, the light is so strong that the brilliant reflections hide faults. Often the strong sunlight will make a false color stone appear so blue that one could hardly believe it to be the same stone when seen under another light.

The diamond is probably one of the most lasting investment that can be made today. It does not wear out like the sealskin coat, nor go out of fashion as clothes do. In still another sense, it is an investment, for it is productive of larger returns of pleasure than most things It will continue to pay interest in that way after a hundred fashions have come and gone.

Americans spend many millions of dollars for diamonds every year. They buy three-fourths of ah the finest stones taken annually from the great South African mines. Each year they buy from 75, 000, 000 to 100, 000 000 dollars worth of diamonds, over a quarter of a million each day. They have bought so many that they have grown difficult to please and will not buy anything but the best. The average American stenographer wears a finer diamond in her engagement ring than any possessed by the bejeweled royal women of Henry VIIIs court. This is not because the rough diamonds recovered from South Africa mines today are so much better in quality than those found centuries ago in India and not so long ago in Brazil, but because the method of cutting them has improved enormously.

In Europe great diamonds are a badge of caste. When a man puts them on his wife he means to say we intend to belong to the aristocracy. Sometimes he succeeds; sometimes he does not. It is generally a question of money. If he has money enough, aristocracy scrutinizes his balance sheet and admits him.

Before 1848 but few diamonds were imported into the United States. With the increase of wealth caused by the discovery of gold in California a taste for rich jewels developed, and a demand for diamonds arose which has been increasing ever since. In the ten years succeeding 1849 the value of gems duly entered at the custom-house of the United States rose from an annual average of 100, 000 dollars to about one million. Most of the stones imported belong to the class of stones weighing less than half a carat. When pure and without blemish they sell here at the rate of fifty to sixty dollars per carat. Diamonds and all precious stones cost more in the United States, relatively speaking, than those sold in Europe.

In New York in 1866 a pure diamond weighing one carat was worth from ninety-five to one hundred and twenty-five dollars according to its brilliancy and the merit of the cutting.

Bright blue, green, or rose-colored diamonds, if perfect otherwise, are worth as much as white diamonds, but green ones are rare in this country. Over one carat, the price advances as the square of the weight.

The value of diamonds cannot be determined by absolute standards. Weight, cut, brilliancy, color, history, and perfection of the stones are factors that must be considered in estimating their value. It is, moreover, subject to fluctuation. Colorless diamonds bring higher prices than off-color stones, but if decided tints of red, blue, or green are present they may increase the value abnormally.

Had you bought a fine one carat stone in 1929 (the peak year for prices), you would have paid 750 dollars for it— and thereafter its value fell off to 500 dollars (depression low) in 1930. Yet during the year 1934 that same stone would have been worth 650 dollars. In other words, diamonds suffered a decline of not more than thirty-three and one-third per cent during the beginning of depression, and today thy have regained all but ten per cent of their high prices.

A London diamond syndicate controls the price and marketing of diamonds. Having reached London from South Africa in the rough, our diamonds are only half way through their journey to a glass case in some American jewelery shop.

Probably the first objects chosen for personal adornment were those most easily strung together, for example certain shells and brilliant seeds. The harder gems were hoarded as pretty toys long before they could be adjusted for use as ornaments.

Fifty per cent of all diamonds are used industrially, and two fifths of these are all applied to the grinding wheels. To shape the hard surface of emery, of Carborundum, and of tungsten carbide, only the diamond can be economically used.

One of the principal uses of diamonds is in the manufacture of jewelry. Today a woman reaches the peak of happiness when her lover places a beautifully cut diamond set in a gold ring upon the third finger of her left hand. Her beloved uses the diamond as a token of his love and it becomes a covenant between them that they belong to each other. It has been said, "The diamond is to the pearl as the sun is to the moon".

The use of the diamond for other purposes than jewelry depends upon its extreme hardness. It has always been through a diamond, a constant, correctly shaped spray of oil is delivered and the efficiency of the nook is not irk paired by the action of grit or acid in the oil, or by the great heat.

Boring the hole in a diamond for a die or a nozzle is an interesting process. A needle, impregnated with diamond dust, hammers away on the stone for about a week before the bob is bored. This drilling operation costs seven times as much as the diamond itself.

About forty-five per cent of the product of African diamond mines consist of bort, an opaque dark-colored variety of diamond, called also black diamond. Such crystals weighing from one-half to one carat each are used extensively as teeth in stone-saws for sawing marble and stone for building purposes.