Thursday, February 14, 2013

Ain't no princess to me

Welcome to my first blog and Happy Valentines Day.

    The first thing I would like to talk about is the very popular princess cut diamond.  In the last two decades these square cut diamonds have grown to be the second most popular shape next to the round.  Our early experience with these cuts was that many of them came into our store to be tightened in their mountings.  It turned out there was a good reason for this, that being, the setters were afraid that if they applied too much pressure on the corners of these cuts they would cleave or break off the the corners.  After seeing many, many cleaved corners, naturally we stopped doing the work of tightening these diamonds and further I made the decision not to sell them.
    My cutter of choice is the Mason Wolf Co. of Pittsburgh.  For years my father before me chose, Mason because of their specialty, the American Ideal Cut Diamond, a round diamond developed by a man named Tolkowsky that is said to have the greatest reflection, brilliance and fire of all round cuts and all other shapes, by far.  As luck would have it Bob Mason, owner of Mason Wolf had the same concerns as I about the princess and was one of the very first cutting companies to specialize in the square radiant diamond. The square radiant has the corners cut off making it an octagon and much more durable. In comparison I will let Mason Wolf's broceure do the talking.


                             Square Radiant                                      Princess cuts

faceting                  traditional                                              Inverted
                              (like round brilliant

table                       smaller-designed to accentuate                 large-minimizes crown dispersion
                              the crown

crown                     higher-plays active role in appearance       flat-minimal visual impact

pavillion                   depth similar to other fancy shapes          deep

corners                    beveled - cut                                          pointed

ease of setting           routine                                                  somewhat difficult

durability                  excellent                                                marginal


Just off the phone with Bob Mason.  He said substantial amount of work he does is to repair broken princesses.

Moral of the story:  Don't disappont your princess with a princess - make her RADIANT from Dan Doubet.

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