How cut grading is killing horse head diamonds

[ChristineRose]

I'm a little surprised that the experts didn't already know this, but there is a lively market for fantasy cuts. The cutters almost all use colored stones and sims, and contests inevitably use the sims.

Not only do you not have to worry about destroying thousands of dollars worth of rough, they are also much easier to cut and the slightly lower RI of CZ is not going to be as important in a stone that is obviously not cut for face up light return.

Do a quick search on fantasy gem cuts and you'll see a plethora of stunning stuff, and it's not even constrained to using up macles that aren't even going to be a 000 RB.

 

[Serg]

CZ has much bigger dispersion than Diamond. Cut design with good Brilliancy and Fire balance for CZ may be very boring for diamond material .
Most CZ design are good only for Fancy color CZ.
The Difference in RI is important also.
Some very good Cut designs for diamonds do not work well for SiC( it is not possible by just simple changes pavilion and crown heights/angles)

If you need Diamond cut design with Highest Optical performance you can not use SiC, CZ as final test

 

[diagem]

I swear Yoram- I didn't want to go down the 60/60 rabbit hole.
I'm super glad you joined the discussion!

You're a shining example of the fact there's still some hope for artistic original designs.....

What do you think about the statement made by the cutter who told me horse heads are pretty much done because no young cutters want to learn the skill?
That's what got me thinking about how and why we've gotten to this point.

Horse heads are a thing of the past because demand for them is minimal. For example take the horse head that Karl posted, I count 8 complications in the shape alone. And honestly I have never seen such a shape reflecting a horses head almost to the tee!! Who ever cut this had a great eye for proportions, a great hand and a lot of patience. Limited demand for these make the time it takes to cut such a beautiful shape completely non economical (again, when comparing to other fancy shapes and the time it takes to cut them).
Unfortunately today cutters are spending most of their expertise on achieving the wide scope of triple X's, the limited scope of Ideals or simply double X fancies which are usually useless as a parameter for beauty.

If cutter would explore the time and expertise incorporated on such a horse head on other more relevant out of the box thinking we would have clear winners. But as Serg mentioned above, R&D on the Diamond material makes exploring extremely expensive.

I agree with Serg that synthetics will give new opportunities to creativity in the future. Interesting times ahead.

Yoram, a question. Could some of the exploration not be done with inexpensive simulants such as CZ which although they have a different RI? The design could then be adjusted for diamond properties if desired? Currently, even synthetic diamond rough is very expensive for "play".

I have seen some incredibly beautiful non traditional cut diamonds, such as the Octavia that do light my fire, although I fear that the demand for them is much lower than their beauty would warrant. I worry that it will be very difficult to produce for just about any cutter to ever be able to afford to "play" with diamond rough to test potential designs for new shapes. Even when they are stunning, it is hard to create the demand for them.

I have seen some incredible modeling done with Sergey's Diamcalc software, which provides a great starting point and certainly saves a great deal of trial and error work with real diamond rough, but I would still wonder about how do you create sufficient demand to make it commercially viable?

Wink

P.S. Re your question: Aren't you getting sick of offering just super ideals that your clients choose 90% of their time? (I know..., kinda stupid question but still worth the thought!)

No. I am about to open a package with a new, yet unseen by me diamond and make a video of it for my client who lives on the other side of the country from me. I know this, when I open the package and see the light hit the diamond for the first time, my heart will beat a little faster and my eyes will take great joy in what I see. When I steam the diamond prior to making the video, my heart and eyes will be even happier, and when I make the video, my voice will betray that excitement.

Maybe that is why I will never get tired of offering the "Same old thing." time after time after time. So long as my heart picks up its pace and my eyes tell my brain, "OH WOW!" I just do not see how I would ever get tired of it.

Thus I did not consider it a stupid question at all, but one that gave me a chance to think about it before responding. I was still thinking about it when the package come in a short time ago and the answer coalesced.

Hi Wink, I noticed Serg answered the simulant question. It comes down to the fact that we can't play with any material that's not Diamonds, we won't get the same, and even 3D design simulations have plenty of bugs just like most tech tools we use in Diamond planning and preparing.

Regarding your paragraph mentioning "beautiful non traditional cut diamonds"..., you are right, they require significantly more expertise & time to create and deliver (Octavia as example), but everyone still wants to compare them to beautiful traditional cut Diamonds by value. I am hoping you will continue to experience "heart pace picks ups" in your personal enjoyment of marketing those 90% success rate sales and happy clients. What would happen when the public gets bored of those? We might add another 8 facets somewhere and light up the excitement with them...

At Least my question left some sort of thinking period before and after your reply. That's something too.

 

[kenny]

...Regarding your paragraph mentioning "beautiful non traditional cut diamonds"..., you are right, they require significantly more expertise & time to create and deliver (Octavia as example), but everyone still wants to compare them to beautiful traditional cut Diamonds by value. ...

I must comment on this.

When shopping I did notice the Octavia was more expensive per carat than a well cut generic asscher.
I was worried the additional light performance would not be worth the premium.
My worries were unfounded.

After staring my partners for 5 years and mine for 3 years in all environments, at all angles, and in all lighting ... I gotta say ...

It's worth it, in spades!

 

[OoohShiny]

...Regarding your paragraph mentioning "beautiful non traditional cut diamonds"..., you are right, they require significantly more expertise & time to create and deliver (Octavia as example), but everyone still wants to compare them to beautiful traditional cut Diamonds by value. ...

I must comment on this.

When shopping I did notice the Octavia was more expensive per carat than a well cut generic asscher.
I was worried the additional light performance would not be worth the premium.
My worries were unfounded.

After staring my partners for 5 years and mine for 3 years in all environments, at all angles, and in all lighting ... I gotta say ...

It's worth it, in spades!

Thanks very much for posting your 'long term review', Kenny

In my noob eyes, I think this is touching on probably one of the key hurdles that 'non-traditional' cuts have to contend with.

Does one spend x amount on a larger and/or lower colour/clarity, traditional cut stone?
Or does one spend the same amount of money on a non-traditional cut stone that is a bit smaller but promises A1 optical performance?

Even assuming that the latter would be bought for guaranteed amazing light performance, I think there is a certain 'leap of faith' for purchasers - I think most will have (in the back of their mind, at the very least) thoughts about potential future sale/pawn value in an 'absolute worst case scenario' (especially for rare cuts that 99% of the retailers on the market have likely never seen, like the Octavia), and be pondering on whether the premium for top-notch cut would really be noticeable and worth it (and be realised back into one's pocket if it had to be sold, when compared to a similar size/colour/carat generic shape).


I guess it's not that much different from the various discussions that we've seen on the forum regarding Super-Ideal vs plain ol' AGS000/GIAXXX. Is it possible to empirically measure and quantify the benefits the additional work in cutting to extremely tight tolerances brings? Maybe, maybe not, but either way, if there is a certain 'je ne sais quoi' that those who have seen a lot of diamonds can identify in a blind-test, there would definitely seem to be something in it, which would seem to be further backed up by Wink's blind tests on total diamond-noob clients, who 90+% of the time pick the better cut stones from the selection presented.

All this means that those of us who are unlikely to ever get a lot of experience assessing diamonds (in which I include myself), and are therefore reliant on the experience written within the forum, must have faith that the views expressed on the forum are accurate and that spending that little (lot?) extra is therefore worth it. (I thank the PS moderators and admin for tight control of 'shilling' etc!)

At least the PS-recommended vendors do have return policies that enable assessment at home to calm one's nerves. My own experience of buying a CBI stone was "Blimey, this tiny thing costs so much?" while unwrapping it, which was very shortly followed by 'Wow' and several hours wasted over the coming weeks, staring at it in all the different lighting scenarios possible when the other half was out


So, er... I'm not really sure where I'm going with my train of thought here I kind of set off from the station and didn't check the destination lol

I think what I'm trying to say is that, to me, the point that Yoram is making is that one has to move past this 'Is it better than a generic traditional cut?' question and accept that yes, extremely well-cut diamonds are better. By doing so, it removes the 'Is it really better? Should I have traded off cut for size/colour/clarity differences?' questions and allows one to compare value against other similarly well-cut stones instead.

As I sit here and think about it now, it seems that they effectively have to be seen as another stratum above plain old GIAXXX and AGS000 stones, and comparisons (of value and of light performance) between different stone options (including different cut styles) should therefore be made within the stratum rather than across strata boundaries.

This same logic could also be applied to stones cut for their decorative appearance rather than grading on their light performance alone (such as horses head stones), which would be another stratum, within which comparisons could be made based on attractiveness, beauty, uniqueness, etc, instead of based on GIA/AGS light performance measuring tools. I guess this might even include 'crushed ice' cuts, which suffer in terms of outright light return when compared to other cuts?


Anyway, thank you for taking the time to listen to the ramblings of a strange internet random if you have got this far lol, I think I've exhausted my brainpower for today so will quit now!!

 

[Rockdiamond]

We're super lucky to have Yoram participating here- and as diamond lovers, even more-so that Yoram does what he does at the wheel.
From my perspective, he's one of the only cutters who is a master of cutting for AGSL light performance standards- as well as cutting funkadelic crazy one-offs.
But a lot of large cutters today are going for the AGS0 sort of look in cushions as well. 8 main Cushion Brilliant diamonds.
IMO this is driven by the "performance" line of thinking- to me, that is going against a creative perspective.

The point of my thread- cut grading, as it is currently defined, has no way of dealing with horse heads for sure.
But what about the other more popular shapes?
Do we want all diamonds of a given shape to look the same?

 

[mochiko42]

I've seen a few horse head diamonds at the HK gem shows. They're not my style, but I think there should be a niche market for fancy cut shapes. I love ideal cut diamonds, but I also love some of the more uncommon fancy cuts that Erika Winters has been putting in rings (like hexagon, kite, etc.). It would be great to see more threads on fancy cuts on Pricescope. Also, one of the most memorable pieces of jewelry that I remember from PS is that opaque turtle diamond from DBL. In general I believe it's better to have more choices, not fewer.

 

[acaw2015]

Being a consumer and diamond enthusiast I have a different take on this. To me, mall stores are killing horse head diamonds. In my part of the world no jeweler carry any other shape than rb (and usually vg cut!) and maybe the odd princess cut. When I went looking for asschers and cushions I had to have them called in especially for me to look at and most jewelers I asked looked at me like I was a strange bird. One jeweler even got out from his office and said he wanted to take a look at me. When all you see is rb then rb becomes the norm and what brings in profit. why cut anything else? I am so happy for this forum that it actually informs consumers of the difference btw vg and ideal/excellent cut, that is a very needed and good start. IMO that really doesnt do any great difference for horse head diamonds. To save horse head diamonds you need to start showing them to consumers in jeweler showrooms. Im sure any horse enthusiast would love to have one if they knew they existed.
/ aca

 

[ChristineRose]

What may happen someday is that one of the high-tech cut designers with the ray tracing software will start turning their attention to turtles and horses and fantasies in general and then they'll be cuttable by someone who hasn't had a lifetime of practice and a pile of ugly horse heads to show for it. May take a few more iterations of software development, and will certainly requiring recruiting a starlet with a sense of fun.

 

[Rockdiamond]

This is a thought provoking discussion- thanks to all the participants.
Mochiko- thanks for reminding me of that turtle- it was kewl....


After reading the thread and thinking more-
Maybe my fear is that due to the advances in technology that allow a less skilled cutter, to produce more consistently excellent results, that we won't see the "next Yoram" (excuse me Yoram, I'm just making a point)- I mean to say, the newer generation coming up- if we don't have up and coming cutters that yearn to do what it takes to possess the skill it takes to produce the type of things Yoram does, it might be a dying art- with horseheads being a totally insignificant cog in the bigger picture- but affected by it nonetheless.

Cut grades of Fancy shapes are objectionable to me because they work against beauty in some cases. Clearly cut grades are not about diversity of cut.