About 1490, Bartolomeo de Pasti wrote a book of commerce which referred to two types of diamond, diamanti, which were shipped to Antwerp, and diamanti in punto, which went to Lisbon and Paris. Diamanti were no doubt rough sent for ting. Diamanti in punto were pointed stones, which may have been octahedral rough called glassies or point-cut stones.
The Point Cut
Pointed diamonds in old jewellery have angles appreciably below those of the natural octahedron and must have been fashioned into pointcuts. The pointcut is believed to be the earliest diamond cut. Macles - fat, tri- angular octahedral twins with specular faces top and bottom - were also set in jewellery Pointed stones appeared in diamond jewellery of the Middle Ages, and remained popular into the Renaissance period. The first true cut for diamond was the table cut, introduced into Europe sometime before 1538, perhaps with the invention of bruting, but maybe earlier if the flat table facet was produced by grinding.
The Table Cut
The table cut was an octahedron with its top point flattened to a square facet called the table, as shown in. Sometimes the lower point was also ground to make a smaller facet, the collet or culet. Many early table stones had a facet on the bottom about half the size of the table facet on the top and were known as Indian-cut as they came from the Orient. Most were re-cut in Europe. The table cut was produced by bruting and polishing. Cutting was dominated by the table stone throughout the sixteenth century and into the beginning of the seventeenth because classical influences remained and the golden mean of Pythagoras, who mingled geometry with magic, as exemplified by the cut. Although the golden mean was the ratio 1:1.618, it was based on the square; the table stone from the top presented one square within another. Many coloured stones were also table cut for what seemed to be the same reasons. Point stones were still common during the period, but they were gradually being re-cut as table stones. De Boot of Bruges, writing in 1600, described in detail the procedure for manufacturing a table-cut stone out of a pointed stone.
The Rose Cut
A rose-cut stone has a flat back and a domed and faceted front. The form may be as old as the table cut because the Koh-i-Nûr, which was cut no later than 1530, was a form of rose cut, as was the Great Mogul. Cellini de-scribed, in 1568, methods of cutting the rose and faceted stones as well as table-cut and pointed stones. The shape of the original diamond crystal largely determines the shape into thinner rough. The name of the 'modern' rose cut, from the seventeenth century, derived from the fact that it is supposed to look like an opening rosebud. It can show considerable life but is invariably deficient in the fire.
Rose-like cuts were already in wide use in the first half of the fifteenth century. They were of various shapes, triangular being the most common, with each face divided into three facets. The term rosette stood for an early arrangement of diamonds of pear-shaped outline arranged in a circle like the petals of a flower. Both Amsterdam and Antwerp specialized in rose cuts, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Dutch rose is more pointed than most other rose cuts. The facets are in groups of six, the upper or central ones being known as the crown or star facets, and the surrounding outer groups of six, the teeth. The height is usually half the diameter of the stone and the diameter of the base of the crown about three-quarters of the diameter. The base of the crown is usually three-fifths of the total height from the base (Fig. 10.6). The Antwerp rose, also called the Brabant rose, was not as common as the Dutch rose. It is not as high and the base is more steeply inclined, while the crown is less so.
Most rose-cut diamonds were round, but some were of oval and pear-shaped outline. There were, of course, other variations of the rose in the arrangement of the facets. The double rose had some popularity in the nineteenth century and the earlier part of this century for earrings and watch-chain pendants before the wristwatch became popular. The stone is faceted in a dome on both sides. The double rose cut is old, because at least two historic diamonds, the Florentine and the Sancy, were cut in this way. Diamonds faceted all over, called briolettes, pendeloques and beads, are a form of rose cutting. Both are shown in. They were often pierced along their lengths for use as earrings or beads and sometimes through the tops when used as a pendant.
Faceted Octahedra
The table stone lent itself to modification by adding facets. The first elaboration was to grind and polish the four edges of the table and the pavilion to provide four extra narrow facets on the top and four on the bottom to improve more complex pattern of facets were similarly possible by grinding facets on and lustre. This modification is shown in Fig. 10.3. Further modifications into It seems likely that from about 1500 to about 1650, the table cut was the most popular, but there were point-cut stones in use, too, although many were re-cut to table stones and, for the more fashionable wearer, some table cuts were being modified by adding extra facets. Modifications were also being made to the outline of the stone, when seen in plan, by rounding the corners by bruting before faceting, and later by rounding the sides. Up to this time, the octahedral origin of the cut stone was clearly discernible. Although the outline was changed, the angles of the table and the pavilion to the girdle remained not very different from those of the original crystal, about 55° Early inventories refer to diamonds "taille à facettes', but what was meant were what we call rose-cut stones. For example, the necklace worn by Marie de Medici for her wedding in 1600 included six table-cut diamonds and two rose-cut taille à facettes). But when Charles, Prince of Wales, went to Spain in 1623, he borrowed a hatband mounted with gold buttons in which were set eight 'four-square Table Diamonds, two flower-square Table Diamonds cut with fawcettes, two large pointed diamonds, one faire Hart Dyamond and three triangles Dyamonds'. The table diamonds with facets were presumably something like the old single cut.
The Old Single Cut
Professor Joan Evans in her book History of Jewellery 1100-1870 writes that diamonds taille en seige' were introduced between 1640 and 1645. Diamonds 'cut into sixteen' presumably refers to the old single cut similar to that shown in. These were the simple pre-brilliant shapes based on the octahedral crystal Logical addition of facets led to the rounded single cut, English star and square cuts and other variations.
