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Colored Diamonds

Black Diamond - Orlov Diamond



Colored diamonds, can be classified into the following 5 main categories:

  • 1. Natural Colored

  • 2. Painted

  • 3. Foiled

  • 4. Treated

  • 5. Synthetic

    This page is devoted to Natural Diamonds.

    Natural Pearl Info can be found here...

    Natural Colored

    Facts About Diamonds tell us, that a natural colored diamond is the only gemstone that combines the brilliance, hardness and purity of diamond with COLOR. Fancy diamonds should have a body color strong enough to be attractive not just lightly tinted.

    Only 2% of all tinted diamonds actually qualify as fancy diamonds. Approximately one carat of diamond fancies are produced for every 2,500 carats of mined diamonds.

    Yellow diamonds are the most common, then followed by brown, black diamonds and light green. Less common are rose, violet, pink diamonds and blue. (Read about the blue Hope Diamond Here)

    Brown diamonds are mainly used for industrial purposes and are less expensive than colored and colorless diamonds.

    Black Diamonds

    Black diamonds come in grays, or truly black. Fancy black diamonds of fine color and clarity are rare. They have a magnificent sub-metallic luster, some look like black wax. Many opaque black diamonds are of a crypto-crystalline nature and nearly impossible to polish.

    Only the table of the stone of these black diamonds are polished and then the diamonds are bezel set. The black color most often results from an abundance of black inclusions. If the reflections however are green under intense transmitted light or reflected light in all likelihood the diamond had been treated.

    Black diamonds are not uncommon in nature however they are not commonly seen in jewelry because of their tremendous resistance to the grinding wheel. Historically, black diamonds have been used in Antique India Jewelry, Pakistan, Iran, Borneo and Portugal, mostly for use in mourning jewelry.

    The Largest Black Diamond

    The largest black carbonado diamond (not classified as a black diamond in the strict sense) but notable was found in Bahia, Brazil in 1895 and weighed 3150 carats! This makes this natural colored black diamond larger than the Cullinan diamond found in 1905 , weighing 3106 carats. The most famous black diamond or perhaps the most infamous, is the Black Orlov, or “The Eye of Brahma". (shown in photo at the top of this page)

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