Did you ever see a woman wearing a diamond ring and as she moves her hand, suddenly there is like a flash of lighting coming from the diamond?

Or did you ever while looking into a diamond, notice a multitude of color patterns, greens, reds, blues and yellows?

Well if you ever saw one of the above, you have witnessed first-hand the ultimate diamond expression. That is how a diamond attracts the humans attention to its beauty, sort of like the way the peacock lifts his tail to show other peacocks how handsome he is.

Contrary of what jewelers want you to believe, it's not the diamonds color, nor its purity, or even its carat (size) or even the combination of all three of them that creates these gorgeous and surreal effects.

It's the diamonds CUT.

First let's get this straight.

"CUT" does not refer to a diamond's shape (e.g. round, oval, pear, etc.) but to the diamonds proportions, symmetry and polish.

The beauty of a diamond depends more on its cut than any other feature. In fact more than ALL the other features rolled up in one.

The quality of the diamond cut has three major consequences on its appearance, they are sparkle, fire and brilliance.

• the sparkle are the flashes of light, when either the diamond or the light source is moved. This is the flash of lightening that comes out from the diamond, that you experience when the lady moves her hand.
• the fire is the dispersion of light into the colors of the visible spectrum, seen as flashes of color.
• brilliance is the contrast between the different fields inside the diamond, some are black, some are white and some are different shades of grey.

Although when the diamond is perfectly polished, sparkle and fire are visible to all, brilliance is far less obvious, and can only be seen and appreciated by an expert with years of experience.

But make no mistake, it is this feature that determines whether the jewel will look light or dark.

The importance of sparkle, fire and brilliance in this order is mainly when we are dealing with larger diamonds above 0.50ct. However when we are dealing with smaller stones the order of importance is the other way around: brilliance, fire and sparkle.

Why that is so, is a long philosophical discussion, and this is neither the place nor the time for that. But take it from a veteran with over forty years of diamonds experience, in small stones anything below 0.10ct the brilliance of the diamonds can either make or break a jewel.

In my younger years I was manufacturing tiny diamonds for the biggest and most famous watch makers in Switzerland. The main reason they kept on coming back was that our stones had more brilliance than the competition.