Collector Gems

Natural Fancy Color Diamonds are the celebrities of the diamond world. The most famous of the diamonds are almost all colored diamonds. Almost everyone knows of the blue Hope diamond and the canary yellow Tiffany diamond. Only the elite of the diamond jewelery designers have had the good fortune to be able to design jewels set with these exceedingly rare gems. Most often these colored diamonds were set in pedestal like settings that displayed the gem as if it were in a museum.

Past Color Treatment of Diamonds

Diamonds have been color treated for almost 100 years now. The first stones that were treated by Sir William Crookes in 1905 by exposing the diamonds to radium salts causing the diamonds to turn a dark green. However, they were also very radioactive, and took many years to cool down enough to be safe to wear.

Today's Diamond Color Treatment

Today diamonds are color treated in an electron accelerator where they are exposed to a stream of electrons turning the diamonds to a greenish hue. Then through a heating process the stones are annealed to the yellow, orange and brown colors. The diamonds do not become radioactive in this treatment and therefore can be used in jewelry immediately after the color change process.

Painting with Color

The use of color treated diamonds opens a whole new opportunity with the availability of color and the brilliance, durability, and cache' of diamonds. Designers can now think of colored diamonds in the same way that painters' use paint on a canvas. If they want to cover an area with blue, then the area can be pave or invisibly set with blue diamonds in whatever shape they want to. If they are looking for a stripe of purple then a row of channel set purple diamonds are in order. If multiple colors are needed for a piece then today it is no problem finding a supply of yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green, brown and black color treated diamonds.

Today's Designers