Good evening my lovely, I had the opportunity to look closer at some of the yellow diamond rings in our shop the other day, and I wanted to show them to you here:
Yellow diamond rings from Moira Fine Jewellery at Richard Ogden in the Burlington Arcade
Coloured diamonds are very rare, and naturally yellow diamonds are amongst the rarest, which is why they fetch such a high price. The colour comes from the presence of nitrogen when the diamond is formed, and the most fabulously vivid yellow diamonds are found in South African mines. (1) The clarity and the depth of the stone is looked at to determine the diamond’s value, and the presence of another colour can also affect what it will be priced at; orange colouring in a yellow diamond is more rare than brown for example, so an orangish yellow diamond will be more valuable than one with a brown tint.
I adore cushion cut diamonds and the above is a wonderful example, where you can see that the corners are so beautifully rounded off to create the cushion shape
I have written about the world’s most famous yellow diamond before here on the blog in the post A Tiffany & Co Love Story, but I really must mention it again! It is one of the largest yellow diamonds ever discovered and in rough it weighed 287.484 carats when it was discovered in South Africa’s Kimberley mine in 1878. It was cut into a cushion shape of 128.54 carats, and in order to maximise its brilliance it was cut with 82 facets, which is 24 more than a traditional round brilliant cut diamond. New York jeweller Charles Tiffany bought the stone and his gemologist George Frederick Kunz (at the mere age of 23!) spent a year studying the stone before cutting it. (2)
Another one of Moira’s beautiful yellow diamond rings – you can view it at Richard Ogden in the Burlington Arcade!
An oval yellow diamond surrounded by pavé set brilliant cut diamonds. The tiny beads that you can see along the outer edge of the ring are called millegrain (a thousand grains) and they are one of my very favourite details in jewellery. I will write a whole post on them soon!
Sources:
(1) Sciences – All About Yellow Diamonds
(2) Wikipedia – Tiffany Yellow Diamond
Decades of Elegance 