Diamond Beauty (1)

Today let’s start exploring the subject of Diamond beauty. 

Most jewellery-set diamonds lack colour. They are essentially colourless. Not the entrancing red of ruby or spinel, the calm blue of sapphire or tanzanite, or the arresting green of emerald or demantoid garnet.

Diamond beauty, revealed to our appreciative eyes, lies not in colour but in brilliance.  

If you have handled or more probably seen images of unpolished diamond crystals, referred to as rough diamonds in the trade, they look like shiny pebbles. Take a look at my Instagram pic at https://www.instagram.com/p/B_mWInDFMzK/. Yet they are shinier than crystals of other gem varieties but not as much as polished diamonds https://www.instagram.com/p/B_mllfElRw5/

The ‘shininess’ of a diamond is one of their appealing characteristics and part of the makeup of its brilliance. Diamonds display a greater degree of shininess than most other gem varieties.

Why are diamonds so shiny? The answer is in the manner the polished gem interacts with light. Light is essential to display diamond beauty. Two effects can occur when light falls on the flat surface (facet) of a polished diamond; either it is reflected back, shown by this black diamondhttps://www.instagram.com/p/CAus95hFRSh/ or it enters the gem. 

In my next blog we shall look at light reflected from a diamond.