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Diamond eyes are watching you...

Over the years, we’ve seen any number of unusual uses for, and products comprised of, precious gemstones and metals. Most recently in this blog, our fashion editor, Hannah Connorton, told us about an Italian company that has created karat-gold tattoos.

Now, an Indian company, Shekhar Eye Research, is selling gold-plated contact lenses set with 18 diamonds, according to various news reports.

I, personally, am a lifelong wearer of glasses, and now contacts. (I got my first pair of glasses in the first grade. They had one of the Peanuts characters on them, presumably to make me feel better about being the first kid in school with glasses. It did not work.) So, the main question that came to mind when I read about these contact lenses was, how comfortable can they be?

According to what the lenses’ creator Chandrashekhar Chawan told Today, he uses Boston Scleral lenses to create the diamond-studded contacts. These lenses are apparently prescribed for people with severe eye diseases, and one eye doctor interviewed described them as “cumbersome” and “bulky” contacts that have to be filled with saline solution before they are inserted into the eye.

So, the answer to my question seems to be: not very.

From what I can tell in the photos posted online, the diamonds and gold are set in a circle around the iris, much in the same way the color to applied to colored contact lenses that turn brown eyes to blue or green.

Chawan told Today that he was inspired to creating the twinkling eye aids after his wife had diamonds planted into her teeth during a visit to the dentist’s office.

No word on if she’ll be the first to sport her husband’s diamond-studded contact creation but, if she is, one can only assume he’ll cut her a break on the lenses’ $15,000 price tag.

Yellow melee = caution

While in Carlsbad, Calif. for Gemological Institute of America’s (GIA) Symposium last month, the never-shy Martin Rapaport twice publicly named one specific high-end jeweler for selling what could be high-pressure, high-temperature-treated (HPHT) yellow melee in their stores.

As a reporter, my ears perk up when I hear comments such as these. Does Rapaport, an industry veteran, have the inside scoop on jewelry’s next big scandal? Does he know about a big, complicated lawsuit that involves pouring over hundreds pages of dense court documents until you go cross-eyed?

As it turns out, no. Rapaport later said he had no evidence that this particular jeweler was selling HPHT-treated yellow melee. He was simply calling to light an issue that has arisen in the industry and could impact any jeweler: HPHT-treated yellow melee.

HPHT-treated yellow melee (pictured below) is more difficult to identify as being treated than irradiated yellow melee, said Tom Moses, GIA’s senior vice president of laboratory and research. The instrumentation needed to detect HPHT-treated yellow melee is a bit more sophisticated and, visually, they do not stand out as being treated.

Yellow melee treated with irradiation takes on more of a “taxi-cab yellow” tone (a comparison I can appreciate fully living in New York City) while the HPHT-treated yellow melee “blends in more,” Moses said. He added that yellow HPHT-treated melee also more closely resembles its natural counterparts than HPHT-treated blue or pink melee, which tends to look unnaturally bright.

“There’s no question it can create a big challenge,” he said. “The colors produced with that kind of treatment overlap pretty well with colors that occur naturally. An unsuspecting person that deals in this kind of thing could, in fact, be fooled.”

As many of you already know, HPHT has been around for a number of years but, in industry-treatment terms, is a relatively new process. The trend toward using the treatment on smaller stones is on that has increased in recent years as the process has evolved, spreading first to natural colored diamonds and then to smaller and smaller diamonds.

“Not every large stone is an acceptable candidate for the (HPHT) process,” Moses said. “When you run out of those stones, you look to do other things.”

His advice for the industry: deal with people you trust. Know your suppliers well enough to know that you’re not being sold HPHT-treated goods that aren’t identified as such.

Unless you have 100 percent confidence in your supplier, then submit a random sample of yellow melee to a well-equipped and well-staffed grading lab for testing.

Jewelers should check with their preferred lab to see what kind of, if any, testing services are available for melee and to make sure the lab has the necessary equipment to detect HPHT-treated melee.

De Beers steering clear of lab-grown stones

Over the years, rumors have popped up from time to time about mining giant De Beers getting in the business of growing diamonds in a laboratory. The most recent round of rumors that I can recall--and please drop me a line (michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com) if you know of more up-to-date reports--came in 2008, with article such as this and this.

So when the story surfaced about lab-grown diamond company Gemesis cultivating decent-sized white diamonds and larger, better quality yellows, it prompted me to ask De Beers if they have any ambitions in the lab-grown arena.

After all, according to this factually questionable blog posted here and here and I'm sure countless other places on the Internet by now, these reports about lab-grown diamonds have "panic brewing" for De Beers. I can't tell who authored this post--or from where they got any of their facts and figures--but that's the way of the Internet. Anybody with a functioning laptop can log in and post entries such as this, which then end up on countless other Web sites, blogs and so-called news sites. This is the kind of stuff about the Internet that really grinds my gears as a journalist, but I digress.

So I asked De Beers what they thought of the Gemesis announcement and if they had any plans for marketing lab-grown diamonds through industrial diamond arm Element Six.

Here's what they had to say: "De Beers has no intention of entering that market," spokeswoman Lynette Gould wrote. "All our research shows that when it comes to diamond jewelry, people overwhelmingly want the real thing."

Their answer clearly indicates that they have no interest in getting into the business of growing diamonds---or least this is what they are telling me on the record right now. And while I don't doubt there is some concern over lab-grown competition, I don't think De Beers or any independent retailers are, or need to be, flipping the panic switch following that Gemesis report.

I think there is room for mined diamonds and lab-grown stones to co-exist in the market. There are going to be consumers who want traditional mined diamonds because they are well, traditional, and because of the beauty and romance tied to the idea of heat and pressure combining over billions of years to create their stone.

Then there are going to be those who are intrigued with the science and innovation involved in growing a diamond in a lab and also might be attracted to these stones' relatively lower price and lack of thorny ethical issues.

There are still others who'll never own a diamond in their lifetime due to personal style preferences, financial circumstances or the desire to go a different route with their engagement ring, as has been much buzzed about lately with the engagement of Prince William to Catherine Middleton using the late Princess Diana's sapphire ring.

Lab-grown stones simply give consumers another choice and could even bring new diamond consumers to the market, those who are priced out of owning a mined stone of the carat size they desire or turned off by the ethical issues surrounding mined diamonds.

There's no reason for panic to be brewing, at De Beers or anywhere else in the market.

Take a picture, it'll last longer

Let me start off this blog post with my general impressions from the Couture and JCK shows in Las Vegas.

As you might have read elsewhere, the shows were better than expected, although both were being measured against some pretty low expectations, given the state of the worldwide economy.

Still, having an above-average show in this terrible economy is better than meeting, or falling below, already low expectations.

A number of issues came up during the show.

The two that stuck out most in my mind were the power of social networking--the time is now to get on the Facebook, Twitter, etc., bandwagon--and the fact that the industry's memo system is in need of a serious overhaul.

I'll be writing about these topics in future issues of National Jeweler so, for now, I wanted to share with you the outcome of an appointment I previewed in a blog post titled "Are diamonds ready for their close-up?" just before the show.

On Monday (rescheduled from Saturday due to my directionally challenged nature; sorry again Gemory!) I met with the founder and CEO of Newark, Calif.-based Gemory, Erwan Le Roy, and Gemory's head of strategic partnerships, Richard Lucquet.

These are the guys of "Smile, you're on a diamond" fame.

The company's system, called DiamondPure, takes photos that have been uploaded to Gemory.com, shrinks them into microscopic but still-viewable images, and then embeds those images onto a diamond.

The picture is then viewed using GemmaView, a small, telescope-like object developed by Gemory.

As I learned during my visit to the EGL USA booth in Las Vegas on Monday (EGL USA is the lab that grades the photographically-altered diamonds), a video-equipped ring box is included with this special photography package.

It looks like any other "I'm-about-to-open-this-and-propose-hoping-you-won't-reject-me" ring box,
except for the inside of the top lid, where there is a tiny little screen.

Just plug the unsuspecting-looking box into a computer and download 100 megabytes of whatever you like: logos, a video, a picture.

The cost for the photo-embedded diamond (not including the cost of the stone, of course, which has already been bought and paid for by this point), the GemmaView and the box is $2,000, according to the guys from Gemory.

The picture on the diamond idea is, technologically speaking, a very cool concept.

Le Roy and Lucquet said that so far, two stores are offering the Gemory program. And they have big ambitions for their business.They said they plan to add 30 more retail clients by the end of June, and 250–300 more by the end of the year.

As for how many consumers will actually buy into it, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Diamonds phone home

Looking for a diamond that's simply out of this world?

Well, New York diamond dealer Nilesh Sheth, president of Nice Diamonds, might have just what you need.

Some time ago, Sheth purchased two strange stones from a rough diamond dealer here in the United States. After purchasing the stones, Sheth, who admits to having a keen interest in the science behind diamonds, submitted them as a scientific experiment of sorts to the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).

Even though the stones, to me, look like the ones my dad used to spread around our shrubs at home, the GIA determined that they were actually carbonado, an aggregate of small, polycrystalline diamonds that have a porous structure and are opaque.

The exact origin of carbonado is unknown, but one of the theories is that it is formed with "extraterrestrial" materials.

That's right--there's a chance Sheth's "diamonds" came from outer space, just like the diamonds described in this recent story from The Associated Press. (Don't quit reading until you get to the part about engagement rings for bacteria.)

At this point, the stones' future seems just as cloudy as their past.

Sheth said he bought the stones as a curiosity, a "collector's item" if you will.

"It's something different and unusual," he said.

And though he won't disclose how much he paid for the two large rocks, he's not ruling out selling the stones if he finds the right buyer.

Anyone with interest in seeing these stones can drop by Nice Diamond's booth at the upcoming jewelry shows in Las Vegas. Or check out more about Sheth's company here.