The Briolette
In the past couple of weeks I have been asked by a few persons,
all appearing unrelated to each other, about the Briolette
diamond. An so, I thought I’d bring to you what I
could glean about this cut…though I must admit, the info I have
is rather sparse.
To begin with, the Briolette is a form of a rose cut diamond,
and the most famous of them that I could find is the Briolette of
India. Of the family of rose cuts that form the Briolette, there
is also the Pendeloque and the Bead. They are both related to
the Briolette. The Pendeloque has the pear shaped appearance of
the Briolette, but with a sharp edge around the widest part of
the diamond, forming a sort of a girdle. The bead, while
maintaining the symmetry of the Briolette, is rather more
rounded, almost shaped like the marbles we used to play with a
children.
The facets on a Briolette are all triangular in shape entirely
covering the circular cross section of the stone. Now then,
while today Briolettes are extremely–if at all possible–to
find, in the old days, they were a cut much desired. Back we go
for a second, or more, to circa 1810. The place…Russia. The
item…a Spartan diadem. These Tiaras, when rising to a point in
the front, were called Spartan Diadems. The particular diadem I
am speaking of contained brilliant cut stones and Briolettes and
a central pink diamond weighing 13,000 carats. It is unclear in
my source as to whether the 13,000 carats is for the pink diamond
alone, or the total weight of the all diamonds together. I can
not scan a picture of this tiara as it is shown in black and
white, and much get lost in the scanning. I did, however, scan a
color picture of the Briolette of India.
Here in America, the Briolette gained much favor in the 1930’s.
In Europe, tiaras re-gained popularity around the time of the
outbreak of WWII. Again, the Briolette gained favor. And then,
sadly, according to the meager knowledge I have been able to
glean about this stone, the viability of the Briolette waned,
ultimately evanescing like vapor into a cloudless sky.
To see the Briolette of India, which, parenthetically, is not an
easy scan, go to my home page, down the table menu, to Tidbit
graphics, and click.
And there ya have it.
That’s it for this week folks.
Catch you all next week.
Benjamin Mark
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