importance of polish/symmetry in smaller emerald cuts?

[affguy]

With the engagement in the bag and the wedding planning in full swing, it's time to start looking for wedding rings. This time the stone shopping is for myself, as I want a little flash too (albeit much smaller). However, weddings being kinda spendy, of course budget is a concern. I'm pretty sure I've picked out the setting I want, and its designed to be the width of the emerald cut diamond it holds. I think any ring narrower than 6 mm would look a little weird on me, a medium-large kind of guy, so I'm looking at stones in the 0.5-0.75 range with a high L/W ratio. I don't suppose I wanna go much below G on color, though I might be able to get away with H in a tension set, and I definitely don't want to go below VS2 on clarity, so the only wiggle room left is polish and symmetry. It seems in my head like symmetry would be more important than polish with regard to the overall appearance, but then again the table of an emerald cut might show off polish more than other cuts. Bottom line, how important is either in this size range?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Rockdiamond]

Congratulations Dave!

What metal will you make your ring out of?
I ask because if it's yellow gold, you might want to consider going lower in color. Unless you're extremely color sensitive.

What's your ring size?
I'm a size 15.5, so I would probably need at least a one carat stone to look proportional. A size ten finger would probably look good with a 3/4ct+-

Polish and Symmetry :Round stones that GIA grades G/G/G ( Pol/Sym/CUT) are a lot less than a EX/EX/EX.
Not so with emerald cuts. There's not as rigidly fixed a discount for G/G ( no cut grade)- if there's any discount at all. There's also other aspects that make polishing for an upgraded Pol/Sym that make it a far better end product of the cutter does aims for G/G. The result is that some very well cut stones are rated G/G.
With an emerald cut, the aspects that are most important on stones of Good/Good up through EX/EX are things like corner size and overall shape.
There's also the way the stone plays with the light- how it shows it's steps.
One would not need to be an expert to decide what shape they love. The corner size changes not only the profile of the diamond, but also the width of the triangle created by the pavilion facet. This means two emerald cut diamonds of exactly the same LxW can look totally different -
That will make much more difference than comparing stones based on Pol/Sym

 

[affguy]

Thanks for the reply Rockdiamond. Knowing fancy cuts are tricky, I still had my fingers crossed that this shopping process would be much easier than my last, but with most of the inventory on the PS and its vendors being virtual, it sounds like it'll be tough to pick on the basis of such subjective criteria as personal taste on the corners and steps....sounds like fun trying though!

I'm just starting the process and not dead "set" on my ring yet, but the way I'm leaning strongly right now is this, done in black zirconium (similar to this), with a 2 mm wide platinum or palladium inlay running around the circumference. So yeah, very much a black & white setting that's probably less amenable to warmer stones (unless I went over the top to a fully colored fancy that I can't afford...I bet a blue would be incredible).

Oh, and I have no idea what my ring size is yet...not freakishly small or large? Heh heh...its on the agenda to stop by a B&M in the next few weeks and get sized, as I'm guessing spring/fall are the best times to get sized?

 

[Gypsy]

I'd shoot for VG on both for any center stone for a ring, if you can get it. If you can't... ask and find out what the grade is based on. If it's one little flaw you can't see or if it doesn't effect the beauty of the stone... fine. But if it's a larger issue (a random facet that throws everything else off).

 

[Rockdiamond]

COOL ring designs affguy !!

You mention blue- although I am a big fan of natural fancy colored stones, you might consider an irradiated blue for a project like this...I mean the ring style is so modern it would probably look amazing....



By all means ask about Pol/Symmetry ratings- but it's obvious there's a lot of misunderstanding about them.
For example- if an emerald cut had a noticeably crooked facet- or one that throws off the whole patter, it would never get a "good" rating from GIA on symmetry.
Even some stones with "fair " symmetry can look incredibly symmetrical to the naked eye. The issues that will downgrade an Emerald Cut from EX to G are virtually never visible naked eye.