Almost everyone enjoys and appreciates the beauty of a diamond ring, especially when it is on their finger and not someone else’s. What most consumers don’t realize, however, is the intensive process behind creating that diamond ring. From their creation deep below the earth’s surface, to the mining process and the workers involved, into the hand of the skilled jewellers who turn the rough stones into masterpieces, and onto the retail market, the journey from the earth to your finger that a diamond takes is truly an astonishing one.
Carbon is a basic element found in pencil lead, batteries, cloth fiber, and types of steel, just to name a few things. While these items may not seem elegant and luxurious, they are all created with the same basic element that, under the right circumstances, produces of the most respected gemstones known to man, the diamond. As carbon deposits sit deep within the earth’s crust, they are subjected to extreme amounts of pressure and heat.
Over a hundred feet below where some of use are standing, there are deposits of carbon. The weight and amount of pressure that this hundred feet of ground creates is immense. The temperature around these carbon deposits can reach up to 1400 degrees Celsius. As the carbon element is subjected to these conditions, the carbon is heated and compressed a number of times until it becomes a rough diamond. While white diamonds are the most common, when other elements such as nitrogen and sulfur are present, the diamonds can take on a variety of colours, making them even more valuable and rare. Some of the rarest colours are true red and true blue diamonds, but other colours such as green, champagne, yellow, and orange can be found as well. In general, the larger the deposit of carbon is, the more likely a larger rough stone will be formed. Because of the unique circumstances required to form coloured diamonds, larger rough coloured diamonds are exceedingly rarer that their sister colourless stones.
Once these rough stones have formed, they sit and wait to be found when they will continue onto the next step of their wonderful journey.