Eskae Jewellery Sparkles!

September 18, 2011 · 0 comments

What day could be better spent than one filled with diamond jewellery and lovely, wonderful people? A photo shoot with SM Productions, that’s what!

Sandy Mandow, owner and founder, SM Productions asked Eskae Private Jeweller to provide a vast collection of our diamond jewellery for their Diamonds Are Forever photo shoot and wow, what a blast that was!

Sandy, herself, took care of the technical stuff such as the photographer, wardrobe and makeup stylists and the studio location while I was asked to bring the brilliance, a.k.a., the diamonds.

Photo shoots can be long and tedious for some people but the experience was just the opposite for me! It was too short and incredibly fun spending the day with such fun, talented people and I’m definitely looking forward to the next commercial shoot!

And do you want to know what the best part is? You can see our final commercial production right here!

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An Easy Guide To Pink Diamonds

September 11, 2011 · 0 comments

With all of the hype surrounding pink diamonds, it’s only natural that the popularity has increased for replacing the typical white diamond set in your engagement ring with a gorgeous pink diamond.

Pink diamonds are one of the most valuable coloured diamonds in the market which makes the decision of picking the perfect pink rock for you, just as significant! This means when shopping for a pink diamond engagement ring, first find out all you can about pink diamonds through your own research, who the most reputable jewellery professional as well as extremely knowledgeable in pink diamonds and lastly but most importantly, never rush into buying your pink diamond!

Pink Diamond Origin

The very first pink diamond to be known about was found in 1643, where it was gifted to Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde and Commander of the French Army during the Thirty Years War. This light pink coloured diamond, named, Conde Pink Diamond, weighed 9.01 carats and was later bought by Louis XIII but now sits in the very famous, Musee de Conde in Chantilly, France.

Throughout history, large pink diamonds have surfaced to make their grand appearance but only recently, have people’s perception increased of its value within the last 30 years, when the Argyle Diamond Mine released its first pink diamond in 1985.

While scientists are still unsure as to what truly forms a pink diamond, they’re 100% sure of the fact that these little beauties go through the worst malformation abuse of all white and coloured diamonds. Only found in one kind of rock, called Lamproite, has made Australia famous for pink diamonds since no other active mines have yet been found to contain these gorgeous diamond’s very unique mode of transportation.

Searching For Your Pink Diamond

With the Argyle Diamond Mine producing one-third (around 35 million diamonds per year) of the world’s natural supply of diamonds, it only makes sense that they also produce the largest amount of pink diamonds. With 45% of their diamonds in the near gem quality diamond pile and 50% of industry quality diamonds, that leaves a mere 5% of rare, coloured diamonds out of which, only 0.1% of that will be pink diamonds.

To put that into better context, for every 10,000 white diamonds mined, only one pink diamond will be mined and the chances of that one pink diamond being an industry quality diamond is even rarer than that!

The Argyle Diamond Mine does release a very small, set amount of pink diamonds each year but only to select clientele. These lovely stones will always be very limited due to their rarity and more severely, the fact that by 2030, pink diamond mining will come to an end with the belief that no more pink diamonds will be available to mine.

The fact that the pink diamond supply will eventually cease may make you feel the urge to rush out and get one but this is an investment that you should NEVER take lightly or be rash about.

The first and most obvious step to take, once you’ve found a jeweller who specialises or is very knowledgeable in pink diamonds, is to set an appointment with your jewellery professional. He/She will be able to let you know what’s available, what’s a good asking price and narrow down your options to make a well educated decision.

If you can’t afford hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions), then lighten up your choices – literally! The lighter and more faint a pink diamond is, the lesser the price. The darker and more vivid of the pink in a diamond, the price steeply climbs up the ladder.

Remember that pink diamonds aren’t ever remotely near anything close to a cheap price and you’ll never find a sale surrounding it. In other words, be prepared to spend a substantial amount when you make your final purchase!

Creating Your Pink Diamond Engagement Ring

Jewellery professionals are talented artists who appreciate every aspect of what makes up any piece of jewellery. If you’re planning on having a pink diamond engagement ring to pop the question with, then your best bet is to have the ring design customised so that this engagement ring gets a fabulous one-of-a-kind design the pink diamond truly deserves!

Your jewellery professional will sit down with you to go over many different designs of ideas he/she has that will enhance the pink diamond’s quality and appearance while also taking your own ideas and thoughts to create some designs of your own.

If you already know exactly what look you’ll be going for, then go ahead and sketch out your thoughts. Even if you aren’t the best artist in the world, your jewellery professional will understand once you’ve arrived at your appointment.

After looking through all of the different engagement ring designs that both of you have drawn up, the final outcome will produce the exact design you had in mind while including the final tweaking it needs to produce the perfect engagement ring.

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The Top 10 Most Common Questions About Diamonds

September 4, 2011 · 0 comments

1. How are diamonds formed?

The formation process that diamonds go through is absolutely amazing! Diamonds are the only element discovered that consist of one single element, Carbon, that form between 120-200 kms below the earth’s surface.

Obviously, the farther below the earth’s surface you go, the hotter the temperature gets, majorly increasing the pressure from all of the layers of surface above. This extreme heat and large weight of pressure cause carbon atoms to crystallise – which is how we get these beautiful diamonds that we treasure.

2. How are diamonds mined?

Not many people really think too much about the extraction part of the diamond process when putting a diamond on their finger but extraction is exactly what mining diamonds is. Before it can even be worthy of catching your eye, diamonds are pretty unrecognisable when inside of a mine.

Because it takes great skill and patience to gather diamonds without damaging them, there are two types of mining that are the most commonly used methods: Pipe mining and alluvial mining. Pipe mining is the more dramatic of the two since it involves recovering diamonds from volcanic pipes. Miners have to be lowered deep within the cave to be able to find these valuable stones.

Alluvial mining is a little less intense  and one that most people are likely to be more familiar with since it’s done above the earth’s surface. This type involves the screen you’ve actually seen before at riverbeds and ocean beaches, where people sway them back and forth, sifting in search of diamonds and other treasures.

3. Can diamonds break easily?

This is a very important question because the popular thought is that diamonds are invincible when surprisingly, they’re not!  Remember that even Superman has his weaknesses!

While they are the strongest gemstone known to man, they can still go through wear and tear just like any other precious stone and yes, diamonds absolutely can be broken if hit hard enough with a hammer (not that anyone would likely want to do this!).

Not only can they be damaged, they can also damage other gemstones if sitting too close together. For example, if a person is wearing two rings next to each other – a diamond ring on the ring finger and a ruby ring on the middle finger – and both rings accidentally turn towards each other, the diamond will win that battle, hands down.

4. What are the 4 C’s?

Instead of constantly spelling out all four components that make up a diamonds value (cut, clarity, colour, carat), it’s commonly known as the 4 C’s in the jewellery world.

The cut of a diamond is perhaps the most important ‘C’ of the bunch. This is what determines a diamond’s beauty and when cut to perfection, will enhance the diamond’s colour and hide inclusions at the same time.

Since everything is based on the diameter of the diamond, the perfect diameter for a 1ct. round diamond is exactly 6.50mm – not 6.48mm or 6.55mm – but 6.50mm. This allows for the perfect proportion to then be cut, resulting in a diamond that is now able to break up white light into the appropriate colour spectrum very strongly rather than very weakly.

The clarity of a diamond has to do with how ‘clear’ a diamond is. Any inclusions or imperfection within the diamond can lower its overall grade which decreases the diamonds value. In layman’s terms, the more clarity a diamond has, the more the diamond is worth.

The colour of a diamond is simply just that: the colour. Diamonds come in a beautiful variety of colours, to include just about any colour you can think of. To distinguish the difference between their colours, the terms Faint through Fancy and Fancy through Fancy Vivid are given to these gorgeous coloured diamonds.

And finally, the carat, refers to the weight of the diamond (see question #7).

5. What process do diamonds go through to get that, ‘Girl’s Best Friend’ sparkling, Fire and Brilliance finish?

Believe it or not, diamonds don’t pop out of the earth, glittering and ready to be sold! Diamonds are actually pretty dirty rocks that take an enormous amount of fixing up to get it engagement ring ready. Of course, diamonds are valuable as rough, raw stones but cutting and polishing them improve the diamond’s value by a minimum of 50%!

In order to get the full price and value put into a diamond, it takes an extreme amount of expertise and patience (this process can sometimes take up to an entire year to finish!) until the diamond is ready to be placed into a jewellery setting.

The first important C’s of any diamond is its cut, followed closely by the diamond’s colour. This is what gives each diamond, what I refer to as, that ‘Fire and Brilliance’. The cut and colour of every diamond is its heart and soul which makes these two C’s matter greatly in just how important a good diamond is.

Because diamonds rate a full 10 on the Mohs scale of hardness, very precise tools, such as diamond saws and lasers, are used to cut the shape of the diamond. A Russian mathematician, Marcel Tolkowsky, worked out a formula in the early 1900′s that’s used nowadays to maximise the Fire and Brilliance of diamonds.

To give it that special dazzling factor, jewellery professionals use a special formula to determine where the facets should be placed on the diamond. The final process involves a fine, mechanically controlled saw, a laser or a rotating disk that is sprinkled with diamond powder.

6. What constitutes the carat of a diamond?

This is a very short answer with a single explanation: Technically speaking, a diamond’s carat is the term used to express the weight of a diamond, with one carat equalling 200 milligrams of actual weight. If a diamond is extremely small, it can then be expressed by points, i.e. 0.01 or one-hundredth of a carat.

7. Is there a difference between certified and uncertified diamonds?

Those who aren’t in the professional world of jewellery have a hard time fully grasping the concept of certified and uncertified diamonds. The reason that the difference between both kinds of diamonds might throw people off is because these words sound more like more valuable and less valuable. This is a diamond myth that has absolutely nothing to do with a diamond’s value, whatsoever!

Certified diamonds are graded diamonds. In other words, diamonds with a piece of paper that reputable gemmology labs grade a diamond’s quality with. This may sound a little disappointing but it’s actually the biggest difference between certified and uncertified.

Now, here is where this myth that certified diamonds cost more lies: Diamond wholesalers who possess a certified diamond will occasionally charge more for a certified diamond because the buyer knows without a doubt that everything about the diamond is authentic. This has nothing to do with the certification and has everything to do with the seller.

8. What are the three most famous diamonds in the world?

There are so many famous diamonds but sticking to the three biggest and most magnificent diamonds:

The Cullinan diamond: This is, without a doubt, the biggest diamond to have ever been discovered to date. Coming in at 3,106.75 carats of pure white diamond, it was then cut into nine smaller (figuratively speaking) diamonds with the two biggest rocks taking on famous names themselves: The Great Star of Africa (or Cullinan I) weighing 530 carats and the Lesser Star of Africa (or Cullinan II) weighing 317 carats

The Golden Jubilee: The reason for this diamond’s fame isn’t just on carat weight alone but for its colour. The Golden Jubilee is the biggest brown diamond to make its way to the earth’s surface with a whopping weight of 345.67 carats!

The Incomparable: This amazing yellow diamond was first discovered in its 890 carat glory but after being cut and polished, still holds firmly in third place with 407.48 carats of pure beauty.

9. Are diamonds a good investment?

Absolutely! Diamonds will always be valuable and is the one precious stone that will always remain in tact and at the top of the gem hierarchy. They’re a completely tangible investment because of this very reason.

Even if there is a slight fall in inflation, diamonds are guaranteed to ALWAYS go back up on the rise. Even if it’s hard to find a buyer right off the bat, it’s like any other investment that takes patience. The rewards that can be reaped by diamond investments can cover pensions, send children to college and provide a life of financial security if the right investment techniques are used.

10. Where can people find the best quality diamonds?

The most important advice for those who are looking for the best quality diamonds that nature has to offer, is to begin their search with the most reputable jewellery professional in town. Clients need to feel a sense of security and trust with their jewellery professional before rushing into any purchase so that they’re left 100% satisfied with their purchase with all questions answered.

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