Early History of Hearts and Arrows

[Superidealist]

I've become interested in the history of hearts and arrows diamonds and decided to go to the source to see what I could find out. I emailed a couple of the Japanese labs with the following four questions:

1. What is the history of the Heart and Cupid diamond?
2. Which companies were among the first to cut Heart and Cupid diamonds?
3. Who invented the Heart and Cupid scope?
4. What are the standards for grading Heart and Cupid diamonds?

Mr. Katsunori Hirama of Zenhokyo's diamond grading division was kind enough to provide the following answers (edited for clarity):

1. The Heart and Cupid pattern seen in brilliant cut diamonds was discovered accidentally using the "cut proportion scope" about 15 years ago by Mr. K.Yamashita, President of Mount Gold Co., Ltd. Since then, stones showing this pattern have become popular in the Japanese market.

2. In general, the Heart and Cupid pattern can be seen only in excellent cut diamonds. Therefore, the stones showing this pattern had to be selected from excellent cut stones in the early stages. Once the mechanism of this pattern became clear, some small cutting works in Japan and some subsidiaries or tie-in companies of Japanese jewelery firms in foreign countries began, and are nowadays, specially producing these.

3. The Heart and Arrow scope was invented by Mr. I. Yamashita, by remodeling the proportion scope. The scope and its usage were patented in Japan in November, 1990. Also, another patent for an observing method and apparatus was approved on July 8th, 1994 in Japan and July 4th, 1995 in the US by H. Kobayashi of Taiko Co., Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan.

4. The grading standards for H&C diamonds are not officially decided for the Japanese market and so each appraising organization has its own standard. Of course, we at GAAJ have our own precise standards which can be shown you if you require.

I don't want to bother Mr. Hirama, but if there is anything the Pricescope community would like to ask as a follow-up, he may be willing to answer.

On a related note, here is a PDF file detailing the CGL's standards for grading hearts and arrows.

 

[niceice]

It's nice to see somebody else acknowledging the fact that a grading system for Hearts & Arrows diamonds exists

People have asked us for years why we assign grades to our H&A diamonds and we've always told them that we do so in accordance with the standards set forth by the Zenhokyo Laboratory in Japan and they always respond a day or two later and tell us that they've talked to this dealer or that dealer and they were told that a grading system did not exist and we always say "ask the Zenhokyo Laboratory" and that seems to be the end of it... Now it is up on PS for all to read... Love it! Thanks Superidealist!

 

[Superidealist]

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On 5/20/2004 10:24:08 PM niceice wrote:

Now it is up on PS for all to read.
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I know Robin and Todd know this but just to clarify, the PDF linked to in my first post is from the Central Gem Laboratory, not Zenhokyo.

 

[niceice]

Yes, we realize that you are referring to the grading system provided by CGL as noted, we used to work with a lot of H&A diamonds graded by Zenhokyo and thus based our internal grading system upon their system because that is what we had become used to working with...

By the way, for those people choosing to look at the page that Superidealist has linked to, you will need to download the Japanese Language Support Pack from Adobe.com or install the Japanese Language Support capability off of the Adobe Acrobat CD-Rom if you have it. You can download the support pack for Acrobat Reader here so that the document can be reviewed in it's proper format... Now all we have to do is find somebody fluent in Japanese to tranlate it

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

Would it be inappropriate for someone to load the whole translated thing on here?
With full acknowledgement.

 

[WinkHPD]

That would be an excellent question for Leonid. I suspect that it would be fully appropriate, especially if full credits are given.

Wink

 

[CaptAubrey]

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On 5/21/2004 2:36:27 AM Garry H (Cut Nut) wrote:





Would it be inappropriate for someone to load the whole translated thing on here?
With full acknowledgement.
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the polite thing to do would simply be to ask permission first.

 

[pricescope]

I didn't find any email or contact form...

 

[dimonbob]

“The grading standards for H&C diamonds are not officially decided for the Japanese market and so each appraising organization has its own standard. Of course, we at GAAJ have our own precise standards which can be shown you if you require.”

“CGL's standards for grading hearts and arrows”

http://www.whiteflash.com/diamond-education/diamond_hearts-arrows.aspx

A few years ago before, Pricescope became so popular; I tried to get the vendors on DiamondTalk to agree on a H&A Standard using the WF standard. A couple agreed and others just whined a lot.

Right now even people that have no clue what H&A really is are calling diamonds H&A. Of course getting diamond people to agree on anything is like the U.S. Congress to agree on the right thing. It may never happen but we would all be better off will clear standards.

The customer needs to know that we are all on the same page and talking about the same thing rather than getting five different stories from five different vendors. It would not only be a level playing field but the customer would be comparing apples to apples.