This is a first for me – an actual diamond ring. Not a diamond on a precious metal band, but an entire ring made out of a diamond.
This ring is a design collaboration between Jony Ive (Apple design chief) and Marc Newsom, and will be auctioned at Design Miami on December 5th, 2019. The diamond is a man-made one and comes from Diamond Foundry.
From Sotheby’s
Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s Chief Design Officer, and renowned industrial designer Marc Newson – having curated the (RED) auction five years ago – have designed a unique ring, made exclusively for (RED) by Diamond Foundry®. Consistent with their mutual obsession with transforming raw material into objects of value, Ive & Newson’s design is singular, clear and uncompromised by the traditional metal settings and bands that have previously been required to create diamond rings. Their creation will be formed by removing material rather than adding – an ambition made possible by the extraordinary scale of the stone which will enable the ring to be made completely of diamond.
Creating a ring-shaped diamond is no small feat; the diamond block will be faceted several thousand times, some of which are as small as several hundred micrometers. The interior ring will be cylindrically cut out for the desired smoothness using a micrometer-thick water jet with laser beam. The finished ring will have between 2000–3000 facets, more than has ever been seen before on a single piece.
The gemstone will be created by Diamond Foundry®, the certified carbon neutral diamond producer who has pioneered and developed the proprietary technology to form diamonds safely and sustainably.
Here is a link to the auction. I believe the ring will be made for the winner in any size up to US5 (15.6mm in diameter), which is not very big, as average sizes go. My ring fingers are 15.9mm in diameter so if anyone was thinking of buying it for me, it may be too small!
I don’t know much about man-made diamonds, apart from the fact that the composition is identical to mined diamonds. It is not a cubic zirconia or moissanite. It is actually a diamond, just not a naturally occurring one.
Here is an interesting article about man-made diamonds
