Munsell color system for colored diamonds?

[limey]

Hi

In my search for a Pink diamond I had a diamond looked at by Tom Tashey at PGS in Chicago. I went and looked at it and it was very pretty, albeit small, BUT it was my very first experience with a pink diamond.

Tom uses a classification of colors that is much more exhaustitive than anything I could have imagined. He rated the diamond using the Munsell Color System designation as 10RP 7.5/8. This translates into the standardized nomenclature as Strong Pink. In discussions with him it seems to be medium-light in tone, and medium-to-medium-high in saturation.

I can not find anything (for free) that would point me to color charts so I can fully understand this classification! Anyone have any ideas?

I would like to add that Tom Tashey is a class act. His time with me was unrushed, his knowledge and experience amazing and his appraisal very professional. He is in the diamond district on Wabash in Chicago, btw, http://www.progem.com/

cheers
limey

 

[katbadness]

Limey,

Other than the GIA grading for fancy colored diamonds.. This is the only other color classification I have seen..

Found this on Cut Nut's site.

 

[katbadness]

I missed the Munsell request. I apologize.

Try this for descriptions of the Munsell color system.

And here's a small graph found here:

A quote taken from the site:
"Color appearance in the Munsell system is characterized using sets of three symbols. A brilliant red, for example, would be 5R 4/14, where 5R is the hue, 4 the value, and 14 the chroma."

I hope that helps!

 

[limey]

Garry has some great content on this site but he seems to mingle hue, tone and saturation. On this chart Tom Tashey put it as a 3P-4P in terms of saturation, a 5P-6P in tone.

BTW, Color was even and the pink even displayed weak hearts and arrows.

 

[katbadness]

Shorter description found here:

"In the Munsell system of notation, color characteristics are designated by three axes - hue (the name of the color), value (the darkness or lightness of the color), and chroma (the intensity, or strength of the color). A color could be called 5R 5/12, which means, the middle hue of red, a value of 5 which is halfway between white and black, and a chroma of 12 which is as strong as red can be. In this system, there are 10 basic hues, and 10 sub-steps, giving a total of 100 visual hues. "

 

[limey]

So 10RP 7.5/8 is a hue of 10RP (Red-Purple?), a value of 7.5/10 and a chroma of 8. But not sure on the chroma scale for RP I have an email out to Tom Tashey to give me a little more of an explanation.

 

[limey]

Real question is Munsell 10RP 7.5/8 any good

- the stone was pretty, but without another to compare feel like I am flying blind.

 

[DiamondExpert]

For EVERYTHING you could EVER want to know about color in diamonds, consider "Collecting and Classifying Coloured Diamonds", by Stephen Hofer.

It takes only three things to obtain this knowledge: A thick wallet ($300), a strong arm (book weighs 10lb.) and an active brain!

You should thoroughly enjoy the experience, however!

 

[limey]

Gary

Don't tempt me! What does Hofer say about Munsell, if anything... and more specifically how does 10RP 7.5/8 look to you?

Andrew

 

[Richard M.]

Limey,

Gary's suggestion is an excellent one. But for maybe a little less cash (around $12 plus postage in the U.S.) you can get a back issue of the Summer 2002 "Gems & Gemology" from the GIA [[email protected]].

The feature article is "Characteristics and Grading of Pink Diamonds" with a fold-out chart comparing the color grades as designated by GIA and its Gem Trade Lab.

Better yet, you could get your diamond vendor to pull his/her own copy out and show it to you. It's almost a given that anyone selling pink diamonds should have it.

 

[DiamondExpert]

Limey:

Hofer does about 60 pages on color and the system he developed. He describes Munsell and all the other systems related to it (e.g., various CIE transformations, ISCC-NBS), but is not happy with it since the colors are generated from opaque materials and do not account for diamond/gemstone metamerism (different colors seen under different lighting conditions) and their transparency.

He comes up with a 6 step naming system based on the ISCC-NBS (Inter-Society Color Council-Nat. Bureau of Stds.) of the UCL (Universal Color Language), which allows color to be expressed from common names to instrumentally interpolated Munsell #'s.

He admits that it is not widely used/accepted, but blames himself for a bad PR job.

It is a difficult read.

 

[limey]

----------------
On 5/20/2004 5:29:54 PM Richard M. wrote:

Limey,




Better yet, you could get your diamond vendor to pull his/her own copy out and show it to you. It's almost a given that anyone selling pink diamonds should have it. ----------------

My vendor is 662 miles away, the appraiser is 253 miles away (approx). Tom Tashey of PGS did pull out the book and showed me but there is nothing like seeing the scale again now I have to think seriously about plunking down cold cash!

I may look into back issues or go onto U of M campus and see if any of the used bookstores have anything...

still, for those with the book, how does 10RP 7.5/8 look to you! GIA called it Intense, PGS say it is "Strong Pink".

 

[valeria101]

Tone of 10 is red-purple all right...
Chroma 8 for red is about middle (top would be 15-16 if I remember right)

I am not sure what is the sorrespondence between GIA's color grading system and Munsell's scale though (looking up...).

With a stone like this the question is "is it more or less saturated" among GIA intense pinks? The Munsell chart is more precise than GIA color grades, so you can probably answer this Q with PGA grading in hand and a correspondence between the two systems (which I do not have

).

 

[valeria101]

Check this out!


LINK

Taking this info and what I know about fancy intense diamonds, your atone is a "no excuse" intense (meaning not very close to "fancy intense" but not near "fancy vivid").


With high clarity (VS), this would make a very desirable pink!