Antique Diamonds

Diamond Handbook: How To Look At Diamonds and Avoid Ripoffs (Newman Gem and Jewelry...

Diamond Ring Buying Guide

(Jeweler's Circular Keystone,C.R. Beesley, President American Gemological Laboratories)
"The Diamond Ring Buying Guide is a breath of fresh air to the retail diamond buyer. Succintly written in a step by step, outlined format with plenty of photographs to illustrate the salient points, this book can help keep a lot of people out of trouble. Essentially it is a fact-filled text devoid of a lot of technical 'mumbo jumbo.'. . . Beyond the standard discussion of judging and understanding color, clarity and cut, the author addresses other useful issues, such as gold and platinum characteristics, choosing a ring and protecting your diamond purchase. There is no doubt that this guide is a valuable asset to the retail diamond buyer." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Booklist
"Newman, a graduate of the well-regarded Gemological Institute of America, provides photographs and a wealth of information for potential buyers. She also delves into the intracacies of shape, carat weight, color, clarity, setitng style and cut--happily avoiding all industry jargon and keeping explanations streamlined enough so even the first time diamond buyer can confidently choose a gem." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Diamond Ring Buying Guide: How to Evaluate, Identify, and Select Diamonds and Diamond...

Booklist
"A wealth of information" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Library Journal
"Highly recommended! Excellent photographs. Another easily read and understood guide by a respected gemologist" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th Street (Anthropology of Contemporary Issues)

From Publishers Weekly
New York's diamond business is an insular world. Yet thanks to introductions from relatives in the business, anthropologist Shield (Uneasy Endings: Daily Life in an American Nursing Home) gained access to the industry's inner sanctum: West 47th Street in Manhattan. Once there, she interviewed diamond dealers, brokers and manufacturers the majority of them Orthodox and Hasidic Jews and then merged her findings with anthropological observations to illuminate the history and culture of New York City's diamond industry. This modest, accessible if somewhat academic volume, part of Cornell's Anthropology of Contemporary Issues series, covers a lot of ground, including the fundamentals of diamond mining; the origins of Jews' entry into the trade; the minutiae of the business, which still observes verbal contracts and handshakes; the role of the influential Diamond Dealers Club of New York; and the process of arbitration, the system the industry uses to resolve conflicts. Shield also pays particular attention to women's functions in the trade (Orthodox Jews and Hasidic sects are highly patriarchal cultures in which women have often been excluded from the marketplace), the vagaries of being part of a family business and the aspects of the business that allow many men to work well past typical retirement age. Though perhaps too detailed and scholarly for a wide, popular audience, the book offers a window into an enigmatic sector of society that, as Shield ably portrays, balances on the cusp between the traditional and the modern. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
Sequestered within the heart of a cosmopolitan city is an exotic worlda place where diamonds, astronomically priced, are bought and sold on the strength of a handshake, and business disputes are resolved according to ancient Jewish principles of arbitration. Yet it is also a modern industry facing the same fundamental global changes affecting all businesses today.

In Diamond Stories, Renée Rose Shield leads us into the unexamined realm of wholesale diamond traders in New York. Related to several well-respected traders, she had unprecedented access to a society normally closed to outside inquiry. Here she deftly blends her personal relationship and her anthropological training to provide an insightful exploration of this tradition-bound industry, the new challenges it faces, and the ways both industry and individuals adapt to and endure change.

Shield begins with a fascinating history of diamond mining, combining the story of the De Beers cartel, the role of Jews in the trade, and the part diamonds have played both in war and liberation. Throughout, she incorporates commentary by current diamond traders. Succeeding chapters explore the evolving nature of both the global trade and the New York diamond district. Shield takes a close look at the increasingly complex ethnic makeup of the district, illuminates the rarely documented work done by women, chronicles the resilient system of arbitration, and reveals the ways in which many traders work well into their eighties and nineties. Their long lives of work, cushioned by the trades social environment, offer hints for successful aging in general. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Diamond Sutra

Diamonds

Product Review
An entertaining education in the history of the diamond and its evolution into the iconic jewel it is today. (Terry Peters Vancouver North Shore News 20051125)

Product Description


A beautiful look at the world's most alluring gem.

With images as fabulous as their highly prized subject, Diamonds is about the science and glamour of this magnificent gemstone.

The book takes a look at why we desire diamonds, where their characteristic fire comes from and why they are seen as the ultimate symbol of love. Known in pop culture today as bling, diamonds play a role in fashion and celebrity as well as jewelry. Also revealed are some of the amazing properties of diamonds that make it a vital material for modern technology and medicine as well as a "girl's best friend".

Filled with color photographs throughout, Diamonds features six chapters:

• Desire: why diamonds are so highly valued and their properties
• The Hunt: the diamond rushes
• The Cut: how the rocks are transformed into jewels
• Fame: some famous diamonds and their legends
• The Extreme: hardness, transparency, conductivity, durability
• Design: jewelry, antique and modern, on clothing and in film.

Diamonds

Diamonds (Fred Ward Gem Book Series)

John White, Smithsonian Curator
part of a set of seven of the most elegant and informative small books ever written on a carefully selected set of gem topics new photographs from the Smithsonian's gem collection, all new pictures from Australia's Argyle mine, new images from the Crown Jewels of Iran, and a beautiful new cover photograph of the Hope Diamond this is a heck of a lot of changing (in a revision).

Van Cleef & Arpels
Your extensive research on diamonds is quite impressive and we look forward to seeing the dazzling diamonds jump from the pages of your new book.

Diamonds and Bars: The Art of the Amish People

Product Description
Abstraction and colour. Those are the buzzwords designating the salient charactistics of Amish quilts, which remind anyone looking at them of modern painting, be it Josef Albers, Barnett Newman or Frank Stella. Diamonds and bars - lozenges, squares, elongated rectangles - fiery red, vivid green, smokey blue, purple With their stringent geometry, broad colour fields and astringent composition, Amish quilts are startlingly close to Concrete art, Hard-Edge painting and Minimalism. However, the modern appearance of these patchwork quilts stemmed from the design intention of an 18th-century Anabaptist Christian denomination that has chosen to live without the benefit of modern technology in relative isolation. Although the Amish quilts in the collection date from the reign of Queen Victoria and the Jugendstil/Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, they represent the diametric opposite of synchronous European-inspired American art yet prefigure the design principles of Modernism. Europeans began to discove

Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend

Product Description
The costliest & most revered of gems, diamonds have an almost mystic quality about them. This book peers into the vaults of Christie's, one of the world's major auction houses, to present some of the finest, & most valuable jewelry ever to have been auctioned. It includes pieces from such famous jewelry houses & designers as Cartier, Van Cleef, Harry Winston, Pierre Sterle, Bulgari, Boucheron, & Chaumet -- jewelry that has been worn by royalty, celebrities, & socialites around the world. Includes: the designer, how the piece was made, & who it belonged to, as well as quoting the estimate given by Christie's. Superbly illustrated.

Diamonds Famous and Fatal : The History, Mystery and Lore of the World's Most Famous Gem

Book Description
In Diamonds: Famous and Fatal, Leo Kendall gathers both well-known and obscure facts and stories about diamonds, and interweaves these tales with the general history of the diamond. While the stories themselves are fabulous and strange, the history of the diamond is one of glittering allure and dark mystery. Everyone has heard the enigmatic stories of the Koh-i-Noor and Hope diamonds. But few know the bloody history of the "Moon of the Mountains," or the role that diamonds played in financing the intrigues of the royal houses of Europe and Russia. How many have heard the tale of the largest planned jewel robbery in history, in which many of the world's finest and most famous diamonds disappeared forever?

The beauty, rarity, and lore of the diamond is the material of this remarkable book. Bizarre beliefs and events characterize the history of diamonds giving them a weighty impact on social history. The physical, spiritual, and emotional invincibility of the diamond is fully captured in this illustrated volume, making it a fascinating read.

Diamonds of the Holy Trail

Product Description
Diamonds of the Holy Trail is a recount of the author's travel experiences in India, developed into a fiction of light hearted intrigue. The main characters are Paul Mecclesfield, an Australian accountant, and Kunwar Singh.

Paul goes to India for a holiday but mainly to satisfy his curiosity (mid-life crises?) by being a participant in a 'Himalayan Odyssey' to look at the religion of Hinduism.

Kunwar, a 30 year old vaisyas (merchant caste) has taken upon himself to provide funding for the reconstruction/upgrading of part of the holy trail which had been bypassed when the Government constructed an alternative route, leaving many stallholders who solely depended for their existence on the pilgrim trade, out on a limb. He finds no problem with ripping off the rich to give to the poor, and is known as a loveable rogue.

Kunwar is instrumental in the theft of a valuable diamond immediately after its sale by auction in Sydney. The diamond named 'Elygra' accidentally finishes up in Paul's possession at Bombay airport. Right along the holy trail to the origins of the Holy River Gange there are incidences of intrigue, tension, kidnaps, police and army involvement (diamond to fund terrorists?) with reconciliation all around in the end.

There is some romance, descriptions of fascinating Indian people and the beautiful foothills of the Himalayas.

About The Author
Born in Holland. Migrated to Australia in 1955. Occupations: Carpenter, Architectural Draftsman and Realtor (own business for 21 years). Now retired. Married with 3 married sons and 7 grandchildren.