SI-clarity goods performed well, but overall trading was mixed.
Diamond trading at JCK Las Vegas set a cautious tone as the US consumer market remained uncertain, exhibitors reported.
The important fair, which ended Monday, mirrored the mixed trends visible in the sector. Loose-diamond suppliers gave varied reviews, with lab-grown competition continuing to impact sales. Certain categories of natural — chiefly stones with SI clarity — performed well.
De Beers will cease creating synthetic diamonds for its Lightbox consumer brand in a strategic revamp that will also see it manufacture and sell natural polished. “We believe the value of lab-grown diamonds lies in technology rather than in jewelry,” De Beers CEO Al Cook said Friday at the company’s JCK Las Vegas breakfast event.
The miner’s Element Six business will streamline its three chemical vapor deposition (CVD) plants, merging them all into its $94 million facility in Portland, Oregon. That plant will pivot into a technology hub that produces diamonds for industrial applications, executives explained.
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When the Conquistadors landed in the New World, in their quest for El Dorado at the end of the 15th century, they searched incessantly for emerald mines. It would take another hundred years until the first emeralds were extracted from Muzo at the heart of Boyacá, 60 miles northwest of Colombia’s capital, Bogota.
From the 16th century onwards, Muzo emeralds have held a lofty position in the mineral world thanks to their rich green colours, wonderful clarity and distinctive crystal formation. First, they were prized by the Spanish and European royal courts, followed by the Mughal rulers of India, and then by contemporary waves of celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor.
Few destinations stir up a sense of unparalleled luxury and cinematic history like Place Vendôme. From its seminal maisons to its storied clients and the magnificent jewels they covet, we pinpoint the exceptional moments that left a lasting imprint on the legacy of high jewellery
At the epicentre of exceptional jewellery lies one Parisian address: Place Vendôme. Its history, punctuated by war, revolt and the rise and fall of dynasties is almost as dazzling as the pieces its workshops produce. Completed in 1699 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, whose design stamp can be traced across France’s architectural high points, from the Palace of Versailles to Notre-Dame, the ambitious feat of urban design was initiated to frame the statue of then ruler Louis XIV.
Indian filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest Netflix series, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar has been making waves since it released earlier this year. Set in 1920s Lahore, in pre-independent India, it depicts the lives of tawaifs (courtesans or dancing girls who performed exclusively for the nobility), amid India’s fight for freedom from British rule. The eight-episode saga is not only a study in culture, colour and historical grandeur, but it is also a visual feast of outfits and exquisite jewellery infused heavily with Mughal influences.
As the intricate storyline of Heeramandi unfolds, so do the layers of ornate costumes and breathtaking jewels. The task of bringing these historical adornments to life was entrusted to jewellery designers Vinay and Anshu Gupta of Shri Paramani Jewels of New Delhi. The duo, who created 10,000 pieces of high jewellery for the show, belongs to a family who in the old times were the treasurers of the Mughals themselves.
After a brief surge in diamond jewellery demand during the pandemic, diamond miners are now grappling with an oversupply that is forcing them to reduce the excess inventory. The prices of natural diamonds have dropped by almost 20% compared to a year ago, following a surge in 2022, but were higher ten years ago.
Anglo American’s De Beers, the largest diamond producer by value, has been cutting its output due to sluggish demand. Sanctions-ridden Russian miner Alrosa, the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds by volume, stopped publishing sales data in early 2022, cut its output by 2.8% to 34.6 million carats last year.
De Beers has reduced prices for smaller rough diamonds at this week’s sight, with manufacturers saying the adjustments aren’t enough to ease their profitability challenges. The miner cut the price of 3-grainer (0.75-carat) and smaller goods by 4% to 6%, market insiders told Rapaport News Tuesday. In 4- to 6-grainers (1 to 1.5 carats), the price decline was around 4%, they estimated.
Prices of 5- to 10-carat rough increased slightly, though this partly reflected modifications to the assortments, they added. Like-for-like price movements are hard to estimate because changes to the product mix can skew them, the sources cautioned. De Beers declined to comment.
What the chain of diamonds trickling from the marketplaces of Golconda tells us about the dynasties that branded and traded, and won and lost them
When it comes to diamonds, they say, nothing surpasses Golconda. Before the current problematic era of Blood diamonds, Golconda’s rocks shone the brightest. The only known source of the stone till the early 18th century, the mines of Golconda produced diamonds unparalleled in their ability to spawn legends and bewitch the beholder.
These mines put the gem on the world map and marked India as the original home of the adamas, the Greek root word for this indestructible jewel. For this reason, Golconda’s ancient mines, pre-dating dynasties of the last two millennia, were a source of wealth and influence for the powers that controlled them through the ages.
The natural jewels have lost their old mystique because carbon crystals can be grown in labs
Diamonds of the kind that come from mines, not laboratories, got a fine endorsement last week from LVMH, the French luxury group that owns Bulgari and Tiffany & Co. “When it comes to jewellery, we use natural diamonds . . . The most beautiful jewels are, in our opinion, the natural ones,” said Stéphane Bianchi, LVMH group managing director.
This was a nice sentiment but it did not, strictly speaking, make sense. Lab-grown diamonds not only look the same as solid carbon crystals formed in deep earth millions of years ago but are physically identical. Beauty must be in the eye of the beholder to justify paying far more for one than the other.
Over 60% of lab-grown diamonds are produced in China and India.
The natural diamond industry has been fueled by a glittering marketing strategy for decades, but is the sustainability of modern, lab-grown diamonds as clear-cut as consumers believe?
Since De Beers Group’s 1940s “a diamond is forever” advertising campaign, dubbed by Advertising Age as the “slogan of the 20th century” in 1999, the natural diamond industry exploded into a multi-billion-dollar industry and cemented itself into modern culture.
While lab grown gems have been around since the 1970s, they weren’t popularized in the diamond industry until the early 21st century. People are becoming more conscious of the ethics behind how traditional diamonds are mined. As a result, lab grown diamonds attract enthusiasts because they present an ethical option that aligns with contemporary consumer values.
Learn about the issues with the natural diamond mining industry and how choosing lab made gems is a more ethical choice for your next piece of jewelry.
Gem- and jewelry-themed tours and excursions mix treasure hunting with adventure and cultural experiences.
Last year, when Roberto Ruiz visited the Carbonera mine in Querétaro, Mexico, he cracked open a grapefruit-size piece of rhyolite with a hammer. When he looked inside, “it was like finding a fire fossil,” he said during a recent phone interview from his home in San Antonio. Inside was an orangey-red fire opal that he likened to a flame, forever preserved in the sphere of igneous rock.
Mr. Ruiz and his wife, Erika Rodriguez, are among the few people who have traveled to the mine, a desolate spot located in Carbonera in central Mexico, a destination that’s well off the beaten tourist track, some 20 miles from the nearest city.
What goes through your mind when you see some of hip-hop’s heavy hitters sporting exorbitant jewelry everywhere they go? Do you think they’re just living their best life, or they’re being irresponsible with their money?
The world of hip-hop is unique in many ways. It is one of the most expressive art forms available today. It’s common, expected even, to see some of the biggest names in the genre donning expensive diamonds, gold studs, rings, bracelets, grills, and watches. And with shows like Youtube docuseries, “Ice Cold,” where stars like Migos, A$AP Rocky, Lil Baby, and French Montana show off their bling, it seems they’re clamoring for every opportunity to exhibit their collections.
It’s been a tough ride for the diamonds sector since rough prices hit an all-time high in the first quarter of 2022. Last year rough prices fell 15-20% according to the Zimnisky Global Rough Diamond Price Index. Prices are now down about 25% from their early 2022 high.
So what happened to cause prices to tumble? The pandemic years brought generational volatility to diamond supply. In 2020, production dipped to the lowest levels since the 1990s. A recovery in 2021 through 2023 ensued. However, the new “normal” for output is still some 15-30 million carats below pre-2020 levels.
As Guy Borenstein gears up for Stuller’s Bench Jeweler Workshop in March, there’s one hot topic that will be addressed for the fifth consecutive year: synthetic diamonds. There’s no shortage of available equipment to detect lab-grown diamonds. According to the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), there are about 40 instruments on the market that aim to discover natural versus synthetic diamonds.
“Five years ago, I asked attendees how many were screening for lab-grown diamonds [LGDs] and one hand went up,” says the director of gemstone procurement for the Lafayette, Louisiana-based manufacturer. That number has grown as the years passed, but “the majority are still not checking,” he adds.
