What is a Rustic Diamond? Your Guide to Salt & Pepper, Rose Cut and Conflict-Free Diamonds

Today I am discussing rustic diamonds and why I love them so much 😍 I also have released my new Summer Collection that features some OOAK rustic rose cut and salt and pepper diamonds that you don’t want to miss. Check out the new collection by clicking here.

TRANSCRIPTION OF VIDEO BELOW:

Today, I'm talking about rustic diamonds, and the new collection has a lot of rustic diamonds in it, and I thought it'd just be fun to talk about some interesting facts about rustic diamonds and why I'm so obsessed with them. So I think it's just kind of like whenever we think of a diamond... Hi Nora, happy birthday! Whenever we think of a diamond, we think of probably a flawless diamond, but rustic diamonds are another type of diamonds, and they're given this term because they're kind of imperfect, and they have a lot of character to them, and they come in different colors. A lot of times, they come in like browns and stuff. So they're given the name rustic just because they're more organic, whereas a flawless diamond is perfect. So rustic diamonds are super unique. I said that, and that's why I love them.

So flawless diamonds, it's like you could put two and two together and that you can't really tell the difference. Hi, how's it going? And I think there's a time and a place to do the flawless diamonds, but I think rustic diamonds just have a lot more design opportunity to make really, really unique pieces. They come in so many colors, they come in blue, and brown, and yellow, and a lot of people don't know that diamonds come in more colors than white. And a lot of the colors that I'm using in my collection I'm releasing on Thursday, are going to be grays and really icy whites, really light grays. I really like that palette right now. So yeah, those are all the colors that rustic diamonds come in. So they kind of have a lot more variety, and they're also just as durable as a flawless diamond that you would see. So they're really great for heirloom pieces, and engagement rings and stuff like that.

So they're kind of common, but they're also... So most diamonds are just rustic, that's just the normal diamond. Hi, how's it going? And because of that, they're really cost-effective and they're accessible. They're way more accessible than a flawless diamond. So that's why I kind of love them too, because you still get that diamond and you can get bigger cuts, and you can play with bigger shapes, but you don't have to break the bank. You don't have to spend 10 grand on a giant diamond, but you still get a beautiful diamond for an engagement ring.

And so the rose cut is kind of like the common cut for a rustic diamond, and my personal take on the rose cut is that it shows off all the inclusions on it. Hello. Shows up all the inclusions on it and all the colors, because the colors are just interesting in rustic diamonds. So they're really wide, a rose cut... Here, maybe I can show you with my hands. So a rose cut kind of looks like this general shape, like a cross section of it. So it's really wide, so it shows off as much of the diamond as possible, whereas a flawless diamond cut would be shaped like this to reflect as much light as possible to get as much sparkle. So they're not going to be as sparkly, they're definitely going to still hit light if they have facets on the rose cut, but you're really not buying them for the sparkle and the flawlessness, you're buying them for beautiful colors, beautiful inclusions.

And the inclusions are... Oh, wait, I'll talk about that later. So yeah, we have the shapes of the rose cuts. I have a few here, but they're really small, I don't think you can see them. But some come in these really cool diamond shapes. Yeah, there's no way you can see that. But basically, they come in a diamond shape, a kite shape, a shield shape. So they come in really, really interesting shapes, and you can just have a really unique looking piece with them. And the way that diamonds are formed, all diamonds, rustics or flawless diamonds, they're all formed the same way, it's just billions of years of compressed carbon. And so, the inclusions in the diamonds are telling that story of the formation of the diamonds.

So all those little inclusions and feathers, and they sometimes call them... Hi, how's it going? They sometimes call them salt and pepper diamonds, because they have little flecks of pepper, and sometimes little flecks of white clouds and inclusions, and that's just the remnants of how the diamonds were formed. So if you think about it, it's kind of really poetic, telling the story of how the diamond was compressed and shaped over billions of years, and you're not going to get that in a lab grown diamond, so that's the difference between a rustic natural diamond and a lab grown diamond. It's going to have that really cool character to it.

So flawless diamonds, it's like we're seeing like the De Beers and all that, like you got to get the perfect diamond. So they're actually really, really rare. Most diamonds are going to have inclusions. They're going to have tiny, tiny inclusions. You can't even see them with the naked eye. And of course, those are the most valued and sought after, and those are the diamonds that are creating a lot of turmoil and a lot of issues in the industry with mining, because they are so rare and they are so valuable. That's where you get the blood diamond situations. But truly, truly flawless diamonds are really kind of an anomaly. So rustics are the norm, which is kind of cool.

So yeah, I'm not really a fan of the... I use the flawless sometimes, but I do like a middle grade flawless, because I do like some warmth and character. And also, I don't really like lab diamonds because they do require massive, massive amounts of energy to make them, so they're both kind of evil in a way to me, mined naturally from the earth, or created in the lab with massive amounts of energy, and resources, and water. So there is a way to mine diamonds from the earth with more rustic tools and more primitive tools, and you can still have the best of both worlds, and I think that's what we go for when we're sourcing diamonds here. We go for Canadian diamonds, and artisanally mined diamonds, or vintage diamonds when available. So we use a number of different sourcing.

So rustics are going to be probably the easiest to get mined ethically, just because there's a lot less demand for them. There's probably just a lot smaller scale people mining for them. It's not like they're not in high conflict areas as much, so rustics are generally safe in that way, and it's only recently they became super popular, so they were going to be thrown away anyways. So when you think about it, it's kind of like saving diamonds. I know that sounds really weird diamonds would be thrown away, but yeah, rustics are great for that.

So whenever people talk about diamonds, they usually talk about the four C's of diamonds, and that was sort of like a way to create hierarchy in the diamond industry. And you could follow that rule and you could also not follow that rule. Like I said, we take the best of both worlds, we don't really do perfect diamonds. When we do do graded diamonds, we go for just a little bit more character, but you don't really have to follow that. I've seen people even just take a rough diamond from the earth and put it in a setting. So it's honestly just whatever your personal preference is. And the four C's are cut, color, clarity and carat. And of course the more expensive it is, the more flawless color it is, the more flawless inclusions, and the better the cut, that shows off all the sparkle.

So yeah, that's my talk on rustic diamonds, and I'm going to have a lot of them in my collection on Thursday, and I also am going to be designing a lot more moving forward. So right now in my collection, I have the Daphne ring, which I just posted today, and it's this beautiful little sweet rose cut, three stone ring. And yeah, that's the only one I have in stock right now, but I'm really seeing three more rustic diamond rings which would be perfect for an engagement ring, on Thursday. So yeah, that's my talk.