Catherine Curan
01/01/2008
Jean Mahie never cared much for gemstones until she set eyes on a box of colored diamonds two decades ago. Mahie, a jewelry designer and a member of France’s Mazard fashion clan, says the epiphany came when she was visiting Neiman Marcus in Dallas to meet with jewelry department head Dudley Ramsden about her 22-karat gold designs, which the retailer has long sold on an exclusive basis. Ramsden showed her something special: a collection of 50 colored diamonds that the store was offering for sale on behalf of a private collector. The gemstones were only about a carat each—so small that they would scarcely have rated a second glance had they been ordinary white diamonds. Yet Mahie, also a watercolor artist, saw a dazzling palette in the rainbow of 50 hues. "I will never forget that box," she says.
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THE AURORA Collection features almost 300 diamonds in a vast range of brilliant hues. (Photograph by The Aurora Collection (of natural color diamonds), Natural History Museum London, R. Weldon.) |
Even a noncollector might be aware of Bronstein’s Aurora Collection of 296 colored gems, named after the aurora borealis. He exhibited the diamonds at the American Museum of Natural History from 1989 to 2005 and now houses them at London’s Natural History Museum. Bronstein has been chasing colored—also known as "fancy"—diamonds for 25 years. He had his own moment of revelation at the sight of a 5-carat diamond from Belgium in canary yellow. He says it was like seeing a rainbow for the first time. Yellow diamonds are the most abundant colored diamonds, but the richness of a true canary stone, as bright as the bird’s feathers, set him on a quest to capture as many other intoxicating colors as he could, using a combination of his own funds, outside financing and the backing of his business partner, Harry Rodman.
Diamonds in various hues have enthralled the elite ever since Louis XIV took possession of a 112-carat, dark-blue stone from India in 1668; it later became the legendary Hope diamond. Only in the last decade or so have colored diamonds developed a serious following among collectors, however. In addition to Bronstein’s museum loans, massive marketing efforts by Argyle and DeBeers and a dernier cri among celebrities have turned these stones from a curiosity for connoisseurs into a coveted high-fashion item. When Mahie started wearing rings and bracelets of her own design with colored diamonds, people often mistook them for semiprecious stones, judging her red diamond to be a poor-quality ruby.
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A PINK diamond from Australia’s Argyle mine. (Photograph by Rio Tinto Diamonds.) |
Color Me Mine
Mahie herself now owns some 30 colored diamonds, which she has set in rings or bracelets. "I never make necklaces, because I cannot see them," she says. Only once in a while, when she feels her collection has grown too large, does she sell one of her prized diamonds, and usually that is to someone she knows, so that she can see the stone again. She likes emerald cuts that allow her to see through the stone as if it were water, and gravitates toward offbeat colors, such as violet or gray, that others might overlook in favor of deep or vivid pinks.
She shows off one of her prize rings, with a purplish-red octagonal diamond from the Argyle mine in Western Australia. The stone is only half a carat, but red diamonds are the rarest of the rare, and like most, this one cost six figures. It has an open setting so light can shine through it. Mahie says she made the ring five minutes after acquiring the stone.
Mahie continues on her quest for appealing stones, often with
Bron-stein’s expert counsel. Every year, rep-resentatives from the Argyle mines
display 65 carats of pink diamonds—with one to four very rare red or purple-red
diamonds, depending on the year’s output. It is at this Pink Diamond tender
offer that Mahie buys most of her gems, attending the high-security preview in
New York as Bronstein’s guest.
VALUE JUDGMENT |
Supply has begun to dwindle at the mines that are the premier sources of the rarest stones: the Cullinan mine in South Africa for blues, and the Argyle mine for pinks. The Petra Diamonds Cullinan Consortium’s recent purchase of the Cullinan mine from DeBeers for approximately $148 million is an indication that the new owner expects to profit from low operating costs, even if the harvest is small—and the mine has more white diamonds than blue ones. Argyle has been producing pink diamonds since 1985, but the operating company, Rio Tinto, expects the supply to run out by 2018.
All of this is happening just as fancy diamonds have begun to capture more attention, and prices are soaring. In October, Sotheby’s shattered the 20-year-old per-carat record for a colored diamond: A 6.04-carat, internally flaw-less, emerald-cut blue diamond, set in a platinum ring, fetched $1.32 million per carat. This new record follows huge price gains since 2000, with blue stones quadrupling and pinks increasing 100 percent, according to Livnat. This trend worries some members of this clubby, secretive market. Rahul Kadakia, a senior vice president and the head of jewelry for Christie’s America, is the first to admit, "The way things are going, people are speaking about a bubble."
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SOTHEBY'S SOLD this 6.04-carat blue diamond for a record price of $1.32 million per carat. (Photograph by Sotheby's.) |
Prices might continue to sparkle, however, because of the growing demand. Bronstein says there is unlikely to be a replacement for the Argyle mine, and bidding at the tender offer last year was fiercely competitive. Mahie lost out on a dark-gray–violet stone that piqued her interest in the preview. Like every other fancy-diamond collector, she and Bronstein are hampered by the limits of what nature provides, and must marshal the patience to await a possible masterpiece from rough stone.
That was the case three years ago, when a miner from Brazil called Bronstein for a meeting in New York. The beauty of the first stone the dealer showed him, a brownish-pink gem just over a carat, inspired Bronstein to buy it. He was unimpressed with half a dozen of the miner’s other stones, but was intrigued by another one, a 1-carat rough diamond with a blackish coat-ing. The miner had cut a small window into it, and Bronstein thought the stone looked green inside. Such a stone could turn out to be a glorious green after cutting, or it might be just an ordinary white.
Bronstein agreed to send the stone to his cutter and set a price depending on what turned up from the cutting process, which took more than a year. The diamond had to be cut very gently, and sent to a lab repeatedly for certification that there were no artificial substitutions to the color. The stone that finally emerged was even better than Bronstein had hoped for: a 0.63-carat emerald cut, in bluish-green—an exceptionally rare hue. He then had to work out a deal with the miner. Bronstein says the six-figure price was the highest, per carat, that he has ever shelled out for a diamond of that size, but he still felt a boyish delight at getting the prize.
"It’s like opening up a Cracker Jack box; you never know
what’s inside," Bronstein says. In the last decade, colored diamonds have developed a serious following among collectors.
Is That Real?
Just as there are
many techniques for making a fake diamond, a counterfeiter can take a low-grade
brown diamond and give it a more desirable hue through various heating and
pressurizing processes. The best way to be certain that you have a true colored
diamond is to buy from established auction houses and luxury jewelers, such as
Graff, Tiffany and Harry Winston, Moussaieff and Steinmetz in London, Mouawad
in the Middle East and Calleija in Australia, among others. Many reputable
dealers sell their fancy diamonds with a certificate of authenticity from the
Gemological Institute of America or other well-regarded labs that subject the
diamonds to a battery of nondestructive tests with infrared light,
visible-spectrum light and ultraviolet light.
Blood on the Stone
The 2006 Leonardo DiCaprio film Blood Diamond
shined a klieg light on the brutality that can lie behind the diamond industry’s
glamorous image.
"Blood diamonds are relevant to everything about diamonds,
including fancy colored stones, which can and have come from places where there
have been problems," says collector and consultant Alan Bronstein. Buyers
seeking assurances that the beauty they crave has not been used to finance
conflicts should ask where the stone was mined and whether it was traded under
the Kimberley Process guidelines. This UN-backed initiative of government, civil
and industry groups has been cleaning up the trade in rough diamonds since 2002.
There are now 46 participants, including Liberia, which joined last May after
a positive assessment from Kimberley experts. According to the Kimberley Process
website, the only place where rebel forces still control diamond production is
Côte d’Ivoire, which represents less than 0.2 percent of the industry.
Catherine Curan is a senior correspondent for Worth.