manufacturing quality

SORTING

PLANNING

SAWING

SHAPING

POLISHING

Quality is the foundation upon which Venus Jewel was built. Every day we strive to meet the highest standards for cutting and polishing each diamond in our care.

A Responsibility to the diamond

Every employee at Venus Jewel is accountable to the process of creating beautiful diamonds. The artisans involved in the planning, sawing, cutting and polishing of a diamond are entitled and expected to halt the process if they see an opportunity to compel more brilliance, more value from a diamond.

Making Beauty

To create the finest gem possible from each rough, Venus Jewel draws on generations of craftsmen and diamantaires, proven technology and more than forty-five years of experience. Together, these inform the steps we take to turn rough into polish

Sorting

Each gem begins as, quite literally, a diamond in the rough, one of many in the packets Venus Jewel receives from its portfolio of ethical suppliers. From this moment, each diamond will be evaluated, polished and sold in an individual packet.

Our rough diamond planners measure each rough diamond and assess its potential. If a diamond could be part of our Flawless collection, we direct it there for special care. If the diamond is merely gorgeous, it is forwarded to the experts in our planning department.

Planning

Here, Venus Jewel begins the work of considering what will emerge from the rough. Detailed models of each diamond enable us to consider the possibilities of polishing the rough into one gem of maximum size or cutting it into several gems that are smaller in size, but offer greater quality and overall value.

The planner is the architect of the diamond and will consider many options for what shapes could result, what colors may imbue the diamond and where minor inclusions might be retained or excised. Part of this process is listening to the market and understanding how the finished product might fulfill a current demand, and part of it is listening to the diamond itself and sensing what it wants to become.

Within the planning department, our staff is encouraged to offer competing analysis of the same diamond, with the most valuable plan resulting in higher rankings, and bonuses, for its originator.

"The one standard that goes into our design is 'Would I be happy to buy this diamond for someone I love?'"

Sawing

After planning, almost all of Venus Jewel's rough is sawn into one or more diamonds, in accordance with the planner's vision, by computer-aided machines in our Surat facility. In contrast to the old image of a cutter with a hammer and cleaving chisel, these lasers operate noiselessly and precisely, painstakingly flashing atom after atom from the stone.

Far from removing the artist from the equation, though, our diamond sawing operation requires careful work to set the stone perfectly in the machine and program the necessary cuts. Our cutters are also looking to the future, continually experimenting with new methods and tools to make the process more precise and efficient.

Shaping

In the shaping process, also known as bruting or girdling, Venus Jewel uses the natural hardness of diamonds as the ideal tool for smoothing a rough stone. To create the girdle, the narrow band that encompasses the edge and separates the crown from the pavilion, we use a ceramic wheel, coated in industrial diamond grit, and an electronic lathe that is monitored by our hawk-eyed artisans.

The diamond is set in a dop, or holder, which is in turn fixed on an arm that is precisely adjusted to the lathe. The ceramic wheel, spinning at thousands of RPM, is gradually brought into contact with the diamond to delicately smooth the edges to the desired shape.

While the name bruting suggests a blunt process, shaping requires the utmost care to ensure the proper amount of contact between the diamond and the wheel. A coolant solution, poured continually over the diamond during this process, keeps the diamond from developing burn marks or even miniscule fractures that could adversely affect its resulting size or clarity.

Polishing

The final stage of a diamond's journey from the rough encompasses many steps, including blocking the pavilion and the crown into their basic shapes, and polishing the individual facets to the precise angles that will reflect cascades of light from deep inside.

While this process is well known, what makes Venus Jewel unique is that we entrust every aspect of an individual diamond's polishing to one craftsman. Instead of the output of an assembly line process, each of our gems is guided to its final form through the genius of a single artisan carefully working a diamond against a finely balanced polishing wheel or, to cut the notch of a heart-shaped diamond, an old-fashioned electro-mechanical sawing wheel. The results, which have made us the world leader in round and fancy solitaire diamonds, speak for themselves.