Photo by Hust Wilson on Unsplash
I never really thought about why people chose diamonds as the center stone for their engagement rings. I guess out of pure ignorance, I cosigned the idea as a young adult and expected that when I got engaged that I would get a big fat diamond ring. As life goes, my religious perspective changed and my engagement ring is chosen based on certain spiritual faculties that govern my relationship. Nonetheless, my engagement ring is a gold band with a ruby as the center stone and diamonds around the ruby. I personally love my ring but I was driven to write this article because of my experience returning to work and everyone seeing my ring. I work in a 90% female dominated environment and the look of sheer disappointment on most of the women’s’ faces was overwhelming which some people voiced and some people didn’t. Which got me to thinking, "what is the big deal about not having a diamond as your main stone?".
According to readers digest, everything changed when diamonds were discovered in South Africa. In the 1870s, miners found large amounts of diamonds in South Africa, and diamonds started saturating the world markets. Diamonds went from being uncommon to a pretty common commodity, which was not good for their economic bottom line. In 1888, several major South African mines merged together to form De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. The merger created an alliance that would effectively control the movement of diamonds from South Africa onto world markets. As diamonds became scarcer and more valuable, their popularity as the gem on engagement rings began to rise, too.
Mentalfloss.com states that within the decade, they controlled 90 percent of the world’s diamond production—and turned diamond engagement rings into nothing more than an ad campaign. Once the Great Depression ended, the company’s ad agency N.W. Ayer & Son launched its famous “A diamond is forever” slogan and encouraged men to spend two months’ salary on a diamond ring. The slogan helped push the diamond’s significance as an enduring, unbreakable symbol of love, and the sales of diamond engagement rings shot through the roof.
According to gemsociety.org, this table below shows values for top quality gems of different sizes.
Diamonds aren’t the most expensive gemstone in any size. According to forbes.com, until recently only emerald, ruby and sapphire were officially called precious gems. Everything else was called semi-precious. The precious categorization is a reference to value: a really fine ruby, emerald or sapphire can be priced higher per carat than a diamond. Sapphires are extremely hard and durable, so they will last a forever in a piece of jewelry, and rubies and emeralds are extremely rare. According to forbes.com, top watch brands, mindful of this, use emerald, ruby and sapphire in their most important jewelry watches, as the big three below demonstrate – from Cartier, Backes & Strauss and Van Cleef & Arpels.
Since big brands are incorporating emeralds, rubies and sapphires in to their jewelry pieces, I am sure that the knowledge of these stones as being more precious that diamonds will eventually trickle down into the mainstream.
Ab Merit M'Tenua
Citation
http://www.americangemsociety.org/page/diamondasengagement
https://www.rd.com/advice/relationships/history-of-engagement-rings/
http://mentalfloss.com/article/26619/why-engagement-rings-are-made-diamonds
https://www.gemsociety.org/article/are-diamonds-really-rare/