The many facets: Accredited Diamond Professional

FROM PASSION TO PURPOSE

My academic journey

Here we are, the day after getting the officiating phone call from the Montreal Institute of Gemmology: I passed the bar for my final diamond grading exam and I have successfully graduated with consistent top results.

I admit to being demanding and hard on myself, yet this is the first true accomplishment every cell in my body, mind and soul feels proud of.

For as long as I can remember, my unwavering passion for crystals led me to discover the origin Story of Diamonds as I took the big decision to enrol after many years of crossing the Institute’s pop-up stand at the Annual Gem Show, each year at Palais des Congrès.

Juggling a full-time job and the intensive version of the program: I pushed through the theory portion of the course, studying everywhere I could and acquiring every extracurricular diamond manual out there to read every piece of literature within my means — from the many digital volumes of Gems & Gemmology, The American Gemological Society’s paper-back “Diamonds: Genesis, Mineralogy and Geochemistry” to the De Beer’s “Grading Standards” manual. This devotion and rigid time-management, paired with some work days off turned into 12 hour study days, led me to earning the top grade in my class.

Some interesting Diamond facts I learned

✓ Although Diamonds are solely made out of Carbon atoms tightly knit together, our air’s high Nitrogen content infiltrates its crystal lattice upon formation, which makes most natural diamonds contain at least some Nitrogen: rendering them slightly yellow-greyish-brownish on the Cape Diamonds (D-N) colour scale.

✓ According to Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Mike Breeding from GIA: “diamonds have the highest molar density of any materials on Earth, meaning you would have to travel to a neutron star to find a material with more atoms within a given volume.”

✓ Type IIa (Nitrogen-free) natural diamonds make up less than 1-2% of existing natural specimens versus an estimate of 60% of CVD lab-diamonds show the colourless to near-colourless qualities of a type IIa diamond, according to the fall 2016 feature article in Gems & Gemmology “Observations on CVD-Grown Synthetic Diamonds: A Review”.

✓ Atomic vacancies (missing Carbon atoms) within diamonds can cause colours such as green (without having to treat them by irradiation) and structural deformities within the crystal lattice of a diamond, also known as “graining”, may cause colours such as browns, pinks or reds.

• In 2018 New Diamond Technologies Laboratory produced the largest known HPHT diamond in history weighing 103,5 carats.

• Contrary to popular belief, the first lab-grown diamond was NOT produced by General Electric in 1954 (HPHT small-grit diamond for industrial use). It was in fact the CVD diamond industry that produced the first synthetic diamond at Union Carbide in 1952.

Theory aside, my diamond in-person practice labs were the revolutionary part.

LEARNING THE ROPES

Becoming a diamond grading pro

From 9 am to 5 pm daily for a week and a half of tedious lab-work and eyes tirelessly trained to scope out inclusions via microscopes or a x10 jeweller’s loupe, I’ve been treating this like a marathon. This has yielded the greatest reward: passing my laboratory diamond grading final exam has granted me an internationally recognized Diamond Professional diploma backed up by the World Gem Foundation.

I’ve also had the privilege to document each day spent, starting with Day 1 through 8, in the lab looking at unique diamond specimens and you can watch them here.

The most exciting part for me was learning how to draw diamond plots for each type of common commercially found Clarity grades (VVS-1 to I3) since it adds an item of tangibility, as opposed to the somewhat subjective Colour grading. My eyes can see the difference, can yours?

The most challenging part was evaluating Cut quality which includes proportions, polish and symmetry. All for the purpose of determining if light rendition has been maximized from within the confines of the diamond’s facets and this without the shortcut of a Hearts and Arrows scope.

The manual dexterity needed to pinch the diamond in various directions while holding a micro-ruler and looking through a microscope while calculating the measurements with your eyes… is absolutely insane. Imagine being shaky too? You would have to take at least 4 measurements to get to an average before you even start to convert them into proportion percentages. That’s precisely what I went through — the last days I had found my center however, and I was getting closer to the correct objective results. In a perfect world I would have access to a GIA DiamondDock or Facetware® tool to get these same measurements, but regardless, now I know how to do it the manual and old-fashioned way.

The most breathtaking part was to SEE the theoretical knowledge I learned in real life examples: i.e the different habits of a diamond. As I was practicing my grading skills, I couldn’t help but take the picture below, as it highlights this example in an obvious way: a tiny natural diamond octahedron grown into a “Knot” inclusion within a larger Round Brilliant diamond. It’s like Christmas in a gem — a present within a present immortalized in time.

Overall this fruitful experience will open many doors I hope, into the field of my dreams. So, stay tuned and follow my diamond-journey (the next step being a diamond-related career) on my Instagram @ lamrejuvenation.co ↓

or my frequent vlogs here.

To aligned beginnings,

Evelina Bujor

FAQs

Q: What diamond colour is the rarest: Canary yellow, green or purple?

A: Purple Diamonds. Not to be confused with type IIb (Blueish diamonds due to Boron impurities) or type Ia (Blue-greyish diamonds due to the presence of Hydrogen), are the rarest finds amongst the three colours. Their sources are often limited to the Argyle mine in Australia (now closed since 2020) and mines from the Yakutia and Arkhangelsk regions in Russia.

Q: What is the biggest diamond in the world?

A: The Cullinan Diamond (now faceted into the nine “I-IX” Cullinan diamonds). It was discovered in South Africa in 1905 and it weighs a mind blowing 3,106 carats (621.20 grams) in its original, rough and unaltered state.