Reputed to endow the wearer with purity, love and joy, the diamond is traditionally the emblem of fearlessness. Romantic in history and symbolic of love, diamond is the hardest natural substance on earth and has a hardness of 10 on the Mohs scale. Only diamonds can cut diamonds. It is crystalline carbon, akin in chemistry to graphite, which is one of the softest minerals known.

Diamond forms under high temperature and pressure conditions that exist about 150 kilometers beneath the earth’s surface.

Among the most famous diamonds in the world, five of them are The Great Star of Africa (530.20 Ct), The Orloff (300 Ct), The Centenary (273.85 Ct), The Regent (140.5 Ct) and The Kohinoor (108.93 Ct).

Nowadays, diamonds are mostly mined in Russia, Botswana, South Africa, Australia and Canada.

The round brilliant cut diamond is the most popular shape of diamond. For hundreds of years, diamond cutters have been working with this cut to maximize its brilliance and fire. Diamonds may also be cut into other shapes such as princess, cushion, emerald, marquise and radiant.

When talking about diamonds, usually what comes to our mind is an image of sparkling, transparent gemstones. While this variety of diamonds known as colorless diamonds accounts for the majority of diamonds, they are far from being the only type. In fact, there is a whole world of diamonds displaying many different colors, known as Fancy Colour Diamonds. Only a small percentage of the world’s diamonds are worthy of being deemed a gemstone-quality colour diamond. This is one of the reasons why coloured diamonds can sometimes demand incredibly high prices. Another reason is that the production process for diamonds is lengthy and costly as it involves a great deal of resources and manpower.

Diamonds are graded for their 4 Cs that is Clarity, Colour, Cut and Carat Weight, which are usually the four main criteria that determine the price of diamonds.
Click here to learn more on the 4 Cs of a diamond.