American Cut; The First 100 Years - Al Gilbertson *FREE PDF*

[John P]

Diamond enthusiasts will be delighted to know that this tremendous book by Al Gilbertson is now online as a free PDF, fully searchable on your computer.

Share this link with your diamond loving colleagues, clients and friends.
https://archive.org/details/AmericanCut--theFirst100YearsTheEvolutionOfTheAmericanCutDiamond

For those unfamiliar with the book here's a review composed shortly after its publication.
https://www.pricescope.com/journal/american_cut_first_100_years_al_gilbertson_gg

Sincere thanks to Al and GIA for making this valuable resource available.

 

[bmfang]

Re: American Cut; The First 100 Years - Al Gilbertson *FREE

John P, thanks for the heads up on this. Have been trying to find a copy of this since I first heard about it. Kudos to the author and GIA for making it freely accessible at the Internet Archive!

 

[Karl_K]

Re: American Cut; The First 100 Years - Al Gilbertson *FREE

Awesome!!!!!!
Anyone who is the least bit interested in diamonds should read it!!!!

 

[pyramid]

Re: American Cut; The First 100 Years - Al Gilbertson *FREE

Love it. Saw this at tea time and wished very much that I could have read it tonight but had other things planned. Will definitely be reading as I have been intending to get a copy.

 

[Texas Leaguer]

Re: American Cut; The First 100 Years - Al Gilbertson *FREE

Very cool. Thanks for posting John.

I agree, it's a great piece of work and I think the regulars here will really find it fascinating.

I found it amazing that a small number of American cutters were advocating for cutting to beauty over weight well over a hundred years ago and were essentially stymied by an industry that had a different mindset. And, although progress has been made in the 'information age", we are still in a very similar place!

I also did a short review of the book and anyone interested can find it on our site using the search bar.

 

[Rhino]

Re: American Cut; The First 100 Years - Al Gilbertson *FREE

Thanks for posting this John. Al is at the top of his game.

 

[bmfang]

Re: American Cut; The First 100 Years - Al Gilbertson *FREE

This has been an excellent read thus far while bottle feeding my new bub in the wee hours of the morning.

 

[OoohShiny]

This is great, thanks very much for posting the link, John!

 

[Priann Abeyadeera]

Due to the heated legal butte over copyrighted material Internet Archive has clamped down on all methods of downloading material even of those where the copyright period has expired. "American Cut" the book by Al Gilbertson the finest book I have ever read on the marvelous history of the Art of Diamond faceting as it evolved in America from 1860 to the 1960 is a "must read " for all gem faceting enthusiasts.



Thanks to the wisdom of Mr Al Gilbertson G.G. the reading pubic has been blessed with two versions of the book he uploaded onto the Internet Archive cloud data base.



The book is now available at your given web URL with [archive DOT org https://archive.org/details/AmericanCut--theFirst100YearsTheEvolutionOfTheAmericanCutDiamond]. Surprisingly with simple mouse clicks one is able to freely download both the two versions of the full book. One is of low page resolution hence has a small size. I downloaded the larger 296 Mega byte version and optimized it down to 52 Mega bytes using the free version of PDFXchange Editor, with completely searchable text.



The images and text remained in high resolution. We of the gem faceting community in Sri Lanka are grateful to you all for the information provided on your web page.

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

That is very generous of Al!
I have the physical book and Al is a dedicated researcher!

 

[Texas Leaguer]

Al Gilberson is a great guy, and yes, very generous. When we had a pricescope get together a few years ago at GIA he presented everyone with a signed copy.

It's a very, very good read for anyone interested in diamonds.