Gemesis laboratory grown diamonds

Jewelry Discussion
21 
    nothing even remotely out wears a diamond. Given the foregoing
fact, isn't it supremely significant that it finds its' commonest
use as an icon that binds personal relationships together ?

Actually, I DO find it incredibly ironic that the symbol of Eternal,
Undying, Growing Love is the detritus left after the deaths of
everything from spirochetes to dinosaurs that gathered together in a
rotting mass on the bottom of an ocean somewhere and then had every
bit of life crushed out of it under unimaginable pressure and heat
until it becomes a rock-like substance that doesn’t in the faintest
way resemble anything that was ever alive.

LOL!
Sojourner

22 
    It's like when I watch Kay's Jewelers, or one of the other
mall chains, run a big advertising campaign before Valentine's Day.

I don’t know if it’s Kay or who it was, but remember the commercial
where the guy and a woman are standing in a quaint little courtyard
somewhere, and the guy starts screaming to the world, “I LOVE THIS
WOMAN!” The woman gets all embarrassed and starts shushing him and
trying to get him to shut up. She can’t be bothered to say a thing
positive to him until he pulls a diamond out of his pocket and gives
it to her.

If I’m ever in a quaint little courtyard - or anywhere else for that
matter - with a man I care for who starts shouting at the top of his
lungs, “I LOVE THIS WOMAN”, I’m going to be screaming right
alongside him, “I LOVE THIS MAN!”

Who needs the diamond? Not me.

Sojourner

23

Hmmm…what an interesting turn this thread has taken, and
ordinarily I’d only skim it. I’m with the
not-so-nuts-about-diamonds folks who have chimed in already. Sure,
diamonds are nice and sparkly. They do throw light around in an
exciting way when they’re cut well. And yeah, they’re a good,
durable stone for jewelry that will be worn all the time.

All that said, though, I’m just not that keen on 'em. When I see
diamonds set, as they usually are, in some blah, uninspired, trite,
mass-produced setting in a mall shop, I can only think of them as
symbols of our rampant consumerism and selfishness. It makes it
worse to consider that a lot of them are mined by people living in
poor countries and working in poor conditions, and that these people
rarely cross the minds of the final consumers of the diamonds.
Diamonds in many of their contexts have the same effect on me as
Louis Vitton luggage or Hummers - they only serve to advertise to
the world at large that the owner has enough money to blow it on a
geegaw that is not necessarily the least bit aesthetically appealing
or practical, and it makes me cross to think what good could have
been wrought with that wasted money.

Now, I know that all diamonds are not drenched in blood, all
diamonds are not set in bland jewelry, and all diamonds are not
destined for the fingers of bored trophy wives. There’s nothing
intrinsically wrong with them, and many jewelers use them in
beautiful and innovative ways. But I’d happily trade the biggest
diamond in the world, were it mine, for its worth in agates,
pietersite, labradorite, amber, turquoise, abalone shell, drusy
anything, and any of the myriad other semi-precious stones with
which the Earth has blessed the humble jeweler.

Oh, and pugs are cute because they’re soooo ugly :wink:

Done ranting,

Jessee Smith
www.silverspotstudio.com
Cincinnati, Ohio

24 
Increased popularity of synthetics might drive it down, though.

This has never proven to be the case in the past so there is no
reason to think it would happen now. There are synthetics of all
types on the market and they haven’t negatively impacted any prices
on natural material. As a matter of fact it was the creation of lab
grown star sapphires that actually increased the knowledge of,
popularity of, and consequently, the price of natural star
sapphires.

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-2344392

25 
     But you're wrong if you are thinking that they still control
the vast majority of the world's diamonds. They now control less
than 50%, which doesn't qualify as "vast majority." Unfortunately
for diamond fanciers, that hasn't translated to a decrease in
diamond prices.

The theory of shared monopoly states that when four or less
companies control 50% or more of a market, they tend to behave less
like competitors and more like a trust. I wouldn’t be looking for a
significant drop in diamond prices any time soon.

Lee Einer
Dos Manos Jewelry
http://www.dosmanosjewelry.com

26

I am sorry if I confused you. I was not attempting to be judgmental
or objective about the television show that you watched. I was was
responding only to your posting on this list about your
interpretation of the show.

Epaul Fischer
Gryphon Song Creations
Signet rings and custom gem carvings
www.gemartist.com

27 
In fact, prices have never been higher. Increased popularity of
synthetics might drive it down, though.

I don’t see why that would be the case. I think that an increase in
low cost alternates to mined diamonds that are indistinguishable to
an informed retail buyer will only serve to drive up the cost of
mined diamonds. If the only difference is the snob appeal or the
Nature appeal then those buyers who care about the difference will
pay an ever increasing premium.

    Also for those of you who think synthetic is just fine I'll
remember that when the machines available to man start cranking out
your designs for 1/10th the price and claim that they are just as
good as the handmade product.

Not a valid analogy. In the first place your analogy includes
copyright infringement issues that are not relevant. In the second
place, one of the cornerstones of selling “hand-made” art or craft
is the very argument that an IDENTICAL machine made item has less
value BECAUSE it is machine made. This is often helped by the very
fact that most machine made products are manufactured for the least
possible selling price and that most hand-made items are constructed
and/or finished to a much higher standard, so they are not
identical. The third point in respect to your analogy, at what
instance in jewelry creation is the line drawn between “hand-made”
and “machine-made”. A die struck solitaire setting is claimed to be
just as good as one carved from wax or one fabricated “by hand”
(using machines, of course). See David Huffman great post a few days
ago for an in-depth look at this aspect of the jewelry industry.

The line is very clear in not taking into account
misrepresentation or simulates. Sorta. I think part of what muddies
the argument for some are created stones that are not exact
duplicates. I flame fusion ruby is NOT the same as a mined ruby, or
a Chatham created ruby. In the case of
Gemesis diamonds and a increasing number of other lab-grown stones
there is no discernible difference short of complex and mostly
microscopic testing. To some people the difference in origin is
vital, to some people it is not. Often very similar reasons are
quoted by both sides as the basis of their feelings. The argument of
“a testament to Nature” has already been cited by both sides. Some
feel a mined gemstone is the only “real” gemstone, some feel that
the process of gemstone mining is an ecological wrong that can be
circumvented by lab-grown stones. Some feel that it is only a “real”
gemstone if it is mined and therefore rare. Some feel that lab-grown
stones can exceed what is available from nature in terms of size,
clarity, and purity.

I have no problem with every person having their own opinion. I do
have a problem with some people insisting that their opinion is the
only valid one.

Ethical practice requires disclosure in the marketplace. The buying
public will make up their mind based on what is presented to them.
The fact that these two instances are not quite the same is not the
basis for the current argument. I have already stated that I believe
that mined stones will always sell for more than an IDENTICAL
lab-grown stone, because those who believe in the “realness” of
mined stones are more likely to spend more money to support their
beliefs. I do believe the day will come (I have no idea how far off)
when the majority of stones offered in jewelry are lab-grown, and
that will be an accepted norm. At such a time mined stones will sell
for far higher prices that they currently do.

Epaul Fischer
Gryphon Song Creations
Signet rings and custom gem carvings
www.gemartist.com

28 
    It doesn't really matter if you like the stones or not---what
matters is the pleasure we give to people when they wear something
so beautiful---because after all we are in the business of giving
pleasure to our customers.

My sentiments exactly. I do quite a bit of custom design or repair of
jewelry containing diamonds that were worn for a life time by a
relative, and I get a sense of the love for and honoring of that
relative by the use of the stone as a symbol not only of the
commitment being made, but of the lasting and enduring love that
produced descendants that are now making their commitment.

I am always honored to be part of the process of making unique custom
wedding jewelry that expresses the uniqueness of the couple. A lot
of the time it is more about the design of the mounting than about
diamonds. What I create is part of the history of the couple, and the
family as pieces are handed down.

Sometimes an antique piece is brought in and the customer wants to
know what can be done with it, and I look at it and see an
incredible handmade piece where it would be a shame to remove the
stone and ruin the piece. It may have an old mine cut that is a
really beautiful stone, not worth a lot unless recut, but just
perfect for the mounting it is in, and a very attractive piece. I
tell my customer that it is, in my opinion, a really fine piece, and
I encourage them to keep it the way it is. Usually the woman does
like it the way it is, they just think they should do something
different with it , and when encouraged to keep it the way it is,
they are really happy to do that. I lose a sale in telling the truth
of what I think.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and know that on that day vows are
going to be made using cold hard metal as symbols of a warm and
loving commitment, and it really feels good to be part of that
process.

Richard Hart

29

Jessee,

Normally I would not get involved in such a heated discussion as
this but I do have to step in and say that I believe all Gemstones
can be beautiful.

I am curious if you don’t like Diamonds because of their higher
value than Agates or because of the look of them. If values were
reversed and Agates as well as Turquoise were the value of a Diamond
and the Diamond was a value comparable to an Agate, would your
opinion be the same?

Nature is a wonderful thing and it has created a large spectrum of
beautiful Gemstones that as jewelers and Gemologists we should learn
to look at in a childlike way and appreciate what they truly are, a
miracle of Nature.

Greg DeMark
Longmont, Colorado
email: greg@demarkjewelry.com
Website: www.demarkjewelry.com
Custom Jewelry - Handmade Jewelry - Antique Jewelry

30 
    But I'd happily trade the biggest diamond in the world, were
it mine, for its worth in agates, pietersite, labradorite, amber,
turquoise, abalone shell, drusy anything, and any of the myriad
other semi-precious stones with which the Earth has blessed the
humble jeweler.

Yes! Hear hear! And you’d have a lifetimes worth of stones to work
with in the bargain.

Like so many other things in life there are two kinds of people:
“diamonds ya!” and “diamonds hmmm” people. To each their own … but
pass me diamond-based cutting tools catalog please.

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light

31

Richard,

Bravo!

I have sold many wonderful pieces of jewelry in my 33 years in this
business. Some of these pieces have had important Colored Gems but
nothing feels as good as seeing the look in a woman’s eyes when she
receives her Diamond Engagement ring no matter what size the gem may
be.

Whether or not there are some people in the world that do not like
Diamonds is irrelevant.

The magic of Diamonds and the symbol of undying love they stand for
began in 1477 when the Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a Diamond
ring to his future bride Mary of Burgandy. The rest has been
history.

Gemesis Lab grown Diamonds are not a threat to the Diamond business
any more than Lab grown Emeralds or Corundum have been in the past
to their genuine counterparts. No woman I have met would want a
synthetic gem to be a symbol of their Genuine love.

Synthetics have a place in our industry as do Genuine Gemstones that
may have had treatments done to them but for a pure statement of
ones love for another a genuine untreated Diamond is the ultimate
symbol.

Greg DeMark
Longmont, Colorado
email: greg@demarkjewelry.com
Website: www.demarkjewelry.com
Custom Jewelry - Handmade Jewelry - Antique Jewelry

32 
the detritus left after the deaths of everything from spirochetes
to dinosaurs that gathered together in a rotting mass on the
bottom of an ocean somewhere and then had every bit of life
crushed out of it under unimaginable pressure and heat until it
becomes a rock-like substance that doesn't in the faintest way
resemble anything that was ever alive.

Please sight some source for the above mentioned concept. I have
never heard anything like that, there was no mention of that in my
G.I.A. diamond class in 1977.

Have you heard about kimberlite pipes. They are from the core of the
planet, extending toward the surface of the planet, and they contain
diamond crystals. You can not use these pipes for smoking.

I think you got diamonds, and oil confused. No wonder you don’t care
for diamonds, who knows what you were looking at? May have been
copralite,which does form from the process you describe, except for
the heat part.

Richard Hart

33

Diamonds? Boring?? No way. I sprinkle them into my rings and things
for the light to catch their sparkle at the just the twist of a
hand. Those little bits of white in a gold setting fill my mind with
images of the night sky in full beauty. Enjoy the Spring on its way
to us by gazing up once in a while.

Best ever, june

34 
    Actually, I DO find it incredibly ironic that the symbol of
Eternal, Undying, Growing Love is the detritus left after the
deaths of everything from spirochetes to dinosaurs that gathered
together in a rotting mass on the bottom of an ocean somewhere and
then had every bit of life crushed out of it under unimaginable
pressure and heat

Huh?!

What makes you think that it was ever related to anything alive?
Carbon is formed in stars.

Bruce D. Holmgrain
http://www.goldwerx.com
@Red_Rodder
JA Certified Master Bench Jeweler / CAD/CAM Solutions

35 
Please sight some source for the above mentioned concept. I have
never heard anything like that, there was no mention of that in my
G.I.A. diamond class in 1977.

I think you got diamonds, and oil confused. No wonder you don't care
for diamonds, who knows what you were looking at?

I know what I’m looking at when I see a diamond. And I assume you
want me to CITE some references?

Which I can’t do. I guess I’m probably ignorant about how diamonds
are formed, but what I was taught in school (and by my age, I’ve
MANY times come to be aware that what I was taught in school as a
child was utter nonsense) was that diamonds were formed from the
carbon detritus of living things subjected to incredible amounts of
heat and pressure until they were squished into a diamond. Kind of
like when Superman grabs a piece of coal, squishes it in his fist,
opens his hand and lo and behold, there is a glittering, faceted,
perfectly cut diamond. EG, diamonds, I was told, are crushed coal,
and coal is petrified smooshed dead plants and animals.

Whatever. Once again, the ignorance taught by the public school
system is exposed.

Basically what you’re telling me is that there has NEVER been any
connection with living creatures when a diamond is formed, which
frankly only serves to strengthen my analogy - a diamond is a cold,
hard lifeless lump of rock. And how it EVER came to symbolize love,
I’ll never know. But it doesn’t hold that symbology for me, I don’t
see it and I don’t feel it.

To me, when I see a diamond, I see something cold, hard, cruel,
colorless, lifeless, something that cuts like a knife, unfeeling and
not just dead, not just not alive, but UNliving.

Why would I want something like that on my finger symbolizing my
relationship with another human being I’m supposed to love and be
loved by???

Most of all, why do YOU think I’m supposed to?

Sojourner
Ottist Ignoramus

36

All this discussion about lab grown diamonds and Gemesis is
fascinating. What is amazing is how our opinion of this is so driven
by our passions, especially the folks who skirt the whole issue by
stating that they don’t even like diamonds. As for the talk about
environmental impact, that’s man’s fault, not the diamonds. Daniel is
right that much more human misery is caused by computers, or oil, or
religion for that matter.

As luck would have it I just saw a talk given by the “founder” of
Gemesis (I guess) Dr. Reza Abbaschian, who brought the technology
over from Russia and worked with the University of Florida to make it
viable (the Russians couldn’t make it work). According to him the
technology can produce flawless diamonds up to 5 carats, which is the
limitation of the steel used to build the vessel to support the
process. You need 57,000 atmospheres and about 2000C to repeat what
Mother Nature does deep down in the Earth’s crust (or maybe it
happens in the mantle I’m not sure). According to the good doctor the
only way to tell the difference between these and natural diamonds
are that these are truly flawless. (Mother Nature doesn’t always have
good process control, what with her being so busy dealing with us
mortals and all). I learned that the yellow in diamonds comes from an
infusion of nitrogen, so you can control the amount of yellowness by
controlling that element. From what I heard I would say these are not
synthetic diamonds but cultured diamonds. That would be my two cents.

PS: Is it only Microsoft Outlook that tells me I need to capitalize
Mother Nature???

Tino Volpe
Manager, Manufacturing Assurance Engineering, Metallurgist
Tiffany & Co.
300 Maple Ridge Drive
Cumberland, RI 02864-8707
401-288-0124
@Volpe_Constantino1

37 
    I have sold many wonderful pieces of jewelry in my 33 years in
this business.  Some of these pieces have had important Colored
Gems but nothing feels as good as seeing the look in a woman's eyes
when she receives her Diamond Engagement ring no matter what size
the gem may be.

Pardon, but I consider myself a woman (pretty sure other people do,
as well) and when I got married, I refused to have a diamond
engagement ring, or any other sort of engagement ring, for that
matter.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t like diamonds. Believe it or
not, there are a lot of women out there who don’t care for them,
either. And not all of us are so shallow as to require our loved
ones to shell out the big bucks for something we can flash in other
people’s eyes.

I still don’t get how something cold, hard, colorless and lifeless
came to be associated with romantic love… give me amber any day.
Liquid sunshine. Flawed. Imperfect. Fragile. Warm. Electric.

Just like love…
Sojourner

38 
    What makes you think that it was ever related to anything
alive? Carbon is formed in stars.

Ultimately, all matter had some unknown origin.

But carbon is the main ingredient of life and especially plant life.

Where did you think oil came from? Diamonds are crushed,
pressurized, superheated carbon. Its immaterial where carbon
originated, at some point (by this time) every molecule on the planet
has at some time been processed through a living being.

Sojourner

39

I wouldn’t usually weigh in on something like this, but a while back
I had a couple of experiences that line up with Daniel Spirer’s
comments. The first was in a smallish “designer” store–probably a
lot like Daniel’s–where I made a typical snotty comment about frozen
spit. The guy behind the counter said “hold on” and pulled out a
stone that literally took my breath away. All I could do was stammer
an apology.

Then I was walking through Tiffany’s, wondering why the diamonds
attracted me so much, when they certainly don’t in the mall. After I
left, I thought about it and realized it was probably just a matter
of the good old cut-color-clarity continuum—I just wasn’t used to
seeing diamonds of that quality. Especially not cases full of them,
looking as if they were on fire.

Lisa Orlando
Aphrodite’s Ornaments
(now in…Fort Bragg!)

40 
   To me, when I see a diamond, I see something cold, hard, cruel,
colorless, lifeless, something that cuts like a knife, unfeeling
and not just dead, not just not alive, but UNliving. Why would I
want something like that on my finger symbolizing my relationship
with another human being I'm supposed to love and be loved by????

In the end, it’s all about pretty rocks. Everything else is
marketing.

I really don’t see diamonds as the physical manifestation of the
cold and meaningless void, but give me a break, they are clear, and
they sparkle, and that’s IT. There is plenty more happening in the
world of pretty rocks, believe me. I too would rather spend my time
in the realm of agates and jaspers, where there is color, and
pattern, and drama. To me, most diamonds look like most other
diamonds, but I have often had the experience of cutting a nice
agate, jasper or opal and realizing that even if I keep on for the
next forty years I will probably never cut another one like it.

I think it odd that while most folks feel they MUST have a diamond
for their engagement ring, etc, few could tell the pricey bauble
from white sapphire, or quartz. That makes it look like the
motivation is in large part the seeds planted by the marketing
wizards (aka motivational psychologists) who have worked so hard to
make diamonds synonymous with wealth, love and sex.

On that note, I have to say it, diamond marketing generally demeans
women. Every time I see one of the ubiquitous diamond ads
suggesting that the guy who gives a woman a diamond is sure to be
sexually pleasured to the point of near coma, I wonder why jewelry
stores and diamond traders aren’t picketed by irate women who resent
being depicted as diamond whores.

Ditto for the “right hand ring” campaign. “Show the world you’ve
arrived,” say the diamond marketers and jewelry stores. “Display
your independence.” “Show them you’re empowered.” Righto, and what
better way to display your independence and empowerment than by
wearing a diamond ring because Madison Avenue told you to…

Lee Einer
Dos Manos Jewelry
http://www.dosmanosjewelry.com