The Brilliant Cut Blog

Above: the Mir diamond mine in the Sakha Republic, Siberia. It's 525 meters deep, has a 1200m diameter and is one of the biggest excavated holes in the world. As World War II drew to a conclusion, the alliance between the USA, Great Britain and the Soviet Union began to crumble. Escalating tensions over Soviet intentions in Eastern Europe lead to the Cold War, which began in 1944 and continued up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The world became focused on an ideological split, with the city of Berlin at the centre, and the powerhouses of the United States and the...

Diamonds have been coveted by humans for thousands of years, and a typical natural diamond crystal - the octahedron - is pictured above. But when did we start cutting the octahedron into the bright and flashy round stones we see in jewellery today? Point Cut Point-cut diamond ring from Venice, Met Museum, New York The first and only known form of diamond polishing up to the 14th century was the point cut. Essentially, in this cut, the natural octahedral shape was improved by polishing faces that were not perfectly flat. It's also been suggested that point cuts were polished from...

Have you ever wondered where the saying 'up to scratch' originates? A quick Google suggests that it relates to a line drawn on the ground at the start of a boxing match. But what if that explanation is wrong? What if the saying 'up to scratch' originates from a practice that like fighting for fun, began hundreds of years before Christ and continues only slightly altered today. A practice to test that most noble of metals: gold. Gold is a reasonably soft and malleable in its pure state, too soft for many of its practical uses. It is therefore alloyed...

I follow antique jewellery everywhere - online auctions, local auctions, antiques fairs, antique shops, Etsy and even eBay. While the aesthetic, the precious metal, the gemstones are all important when looking at antiques, what I personally find far more fascinating is considering who wore the jewellery and why, and giving the piece some social context. Some jewellery is easier to study than others, so I was most intrigued when this 'lover's eye' ring popped up for sale on eBay UK this week. Lover's eye jewellery became popular in the Georgian era, in the late 1700s. Typically the jewellery included a...

I was reading 7000 Years of Jewellery History by Hugh Tait last night, and I was struck by a mention in the first paragraphs about an incredibly old necklace currently residing in the British Museum. It wasn't so much the necklace itself that interested me -  though it is of course a fascinating piece - but more its significance in cataloging and understanding the human desire to use rare and exotic materials for adornment. The necklace was excavated at Arpachiya (near Mosul in modern day Iraq) in the 1930s by British archaeologist Max Mallowan. It was discovered on the site...

Browsing in antique shops, you will quickly come across a piece of jewellery labelled 'suffragette'. Antique jewellery pieces incorporating the gem colours purple, white and green (typically amethyst, pearl and peridot) are nowadays almost exclusively associated with the suffragette movement by jewellery sellers who are understandably keen to attach some romance and meaning to the pieces they sell. But is this brooch/ring/pendant you are looking at really linked to one of the most important political movements of the 20th century, or is the colour combination merely a coincidence? A turn of the 20th century pearl, enamel, diamond, amethyst and peridot...