Industrial Revolution → Transitionals Brilliants = Diamond Design Stagnation
The African diamond discoveries of the late 19th century in tandem with the industrial diamond tooling revolution brought many developments to the diamond industry.
Firstly was the ability to supply the new plentiful quantities of rough diamonds mined on the African continent, to the developments of assembly line mass-production techniques which further required new rough diamond planning, preparing, cutting and polishing processes.
The diamond industry to this day is still running on the steam created back then. Some believe it was a great blessing. After all, millions of people were able to get on the diamond bandwagon and earn their livelihoods globally, but on the other hand.., those days, which are still very much influencing present diamond design a century later, are they a true blessing or perhaps an intellectual burden??
One critical development happened when manual diamond sawing was invented or actually revealed to the world, before this, dividing diamonds leaned solely on cleaving which was extremely limited by nature.
The new manual sawing was a true revolutionary process which allowed additional, more efficient dividing options of each rough diamond into two or more sections creating manifold more individual diamonds to be marketed. This new sawing process affected the old proportions and so newer, flatter, modern diamonds started to be developed.
Deeper proportioned Old Mine cushions and American (Morse) round brilliants evolved into rounder much flatter formed brilliants, after all, more individual diamonds were to be cut out of one single raw piece.., this is when the new transitional’s (as we call them today) were born.
I believe that period started the long erred and lost century of diamond design which unfortunately is still ongoing! The round brilliant Tolkowsky proportions of 1919 were universally adapted and concurrently with the lack of optical education/knowledge forcibly applied over most other 5 to 7 various shapes/cuts utilizing the brilliant 57 facet style or similar.
In the collage, a perfect example of an early transitional round brilliant which exhibits all the elements born from the period discussed, can you notice the historical reference?
This collage displays and explains this whole post in just one picture… with various viewing directions.
Can you visualize my rationale?
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