Diamond

Likewise, graphite is pure carbon. One could say that this element loves to manifest itself in extreme conditions. Graphite, so black, dusty and dull. Diamond, so colorless, brilliant, hard and simple. Life, so chimerical, diversified and complex.

In this game of other extremes, a full circle forms with man and the diamond. The most highly developed life event based on carbon, man, of a precarious and fragile framework, has settled in its frame of reference, Nature, high-handedly, with the explicit intention of conforming it to his needs, domineering it, understanding it, loving it, surrendering to it, worshipping it and relishing its perfection; and scrutinize it, vitalize it, violate it, respect it to finally find himself in its endless games of opposites, of hatred and of love, challenges and regrets.
And, with a somewhat godly and sinful pleasure he finds in denaturing elements, as if defying the one who created them so, with his hallucinated wild eyes, the first genius to spin the first wheel, and finally soften the first flint to obtain a sharpened tool with which to skin an animal and make the deadly arrow tip to start the legendary “Stone Age”, and by rubbing two stones succeed in sparks, mastering fire winning the darkness, and upraise temples, cathedrals, pyramids, dolmens, highways, slums, tunnels carved into the mountains and under the sea, and pathways to the moon, and open paths in the jungle with army tanks, and ant heaps, human anthills of tens of millions of inhabitants, and radio links, war reports, commercials, and humanity living in the world of illusion, imagining itself not afraid of the roaring of saber-toothed cats anymore. Man believes he has broken up with magic and superstition, and always redresses with new clothes but old amulets, and everyone appreciates the diamond, to which they confer different meanings, because they have forgotten the simple classical “why” of this stone: the redemption of the small man on the greatest histories and on nature, all in all achieved with the inventiveness required to transform things, and with the desire to “get to know” the Light!

Industrial raw diamond powder, at high magnifications. Of a yellowish color, generally. Note the transparency, good geometry and crystalline inclusions.

Natural raw diamond. Only a small part of these crystals will be utilized for gemological purposes.

“Melè”. About five hundred of these stones are needed to obtain one gram (5 carats). And these tiny grains have been handmade in India, one by one, and each little diamond, of an average weight of 1/100 ct, has 57 facets.

And the first matter to undergo transformation was the chipped flint, which kicked off the Stone Age, the Age of Man. On earth, everything is, in some way, transformed earth; in this reorganization man took an increasingly active role, and the hardest matter to alter has become a symbol. Then, overcome the concurrent urgency, man has had time to think, and the luminous stone is also a symbol of this “bridge” from man to the Mind man.

We are talking of the diamond.

A conveyor belt passes through a darkened room. It carries well-leveled soil, under an X-ray beam. Diamond is photoluminescent when hit by X-rays, and a photoelectric cell activates a device which collects the bright grains. So in diamond mines one must never even lose the dust. All such efforts are made because diamond is, industrially, ‘something else’. How much does this industrial diamond dust cost? Wholesale price is less than two dollars a carat.

Diamond is not that uncommon. To make it more rare, four characteristics have been invented, the best combination of which declare the rarest: weight, color, clarity, cut.

But these are purely mercantile notes, which are valid only within their setting. In India, I happened to see a diamond cut in a briolette shape, of about ten carats; the cut was far from accurate, and had been drilled by hand to a third of its length. Within it, span months, perhaps years of the work of some quiet craftsman, probably at the service of a gentleman who then ended up in extreme misery, and that stone was there for me, available for a few thousand dollars, and I am still lacrymose today for not having had the sum, and recall that masterpiece with nostalgia
Someone probably will have bought it, sawn it into two pices lengthwise, and will have made a pair of stupid drop cut diamonds, with a weight of 3 to 4 carats each, having nullified the magnum opus of unique craftsmanship.

And what about synthetic diamonds? In gemology this seems to be a taboo subject. It is indeed possible to make synthetic diamonds for industrial use in the laboratory. And for gemological purposes? For the last thirty years I would say it is possible, but at prohibitive costs. In thirty years, the accretion technology of synthetic crystals, mainly driven by demands of the electronics industry, has made great strides forward. It seems strange that diamond be an exception, but this seems the case.