PITTSBURGH—When Jeff Griffin read an Internet article four years ago about how Pittsburgh jewelry designer Paul Bierker had created a Star Wars-themed R2D2 engagement ring, he knew he wanted Bierker to make an engagement ring for his girlfriend one day.
The time arrived on April 7 at the grand opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, Hollywood. While Griffin’s fiancée—a huge Harry Potter fan—was participating in a “wand-choosing” ceremony, he got down on one knee and presented her with a ring based on the Golden Snitch from the Harry Potter books and films.
The yellow- and white-gold band was designed to look like wings, symbolizing the prize in the Quidditch game played by wizards in the stories. For the ring’s centerpiece, Griffin, 34, of San Leandro, California, specifically chose a synthetic one-half carat yellow diamond rather than a natural one.
“My first choice for a gemstone was a lab-grown diamond,” he said. “I chose to go with a synthetic diamond for the cool factor.
“We compressed a timeline from nature of millennia down to weeks. And to get the particular color I wanted for the ring, they irradiated the stone. That’s basically a comic-book origin story.”
Vehemently opposed
THE imitation diamond industry has existed for years, but until recently the man-made gems tended to be fairly rough-quality stones with discolorations and visible flaws. Now the technology has evolved to the point where even the experts need special equipment to tell the difference.
The growing popularity of lab-grown diamonds has led movie star Leonardo DiCaprio and 10 Silicon Valley billionaires to get into the game by investing in a Santa Clara, California-based company called Diamond Foundry. The company claims it can grow hundreds of diamonds that are up to nine carats in just two weeks in a lab.
Lab-grown diamonds are causing quite a stir among the old guard.
Sellers of natural diamonds have expressed concern that consumers could be misled and confused. The latest dust-up between the two camps involves a petition that marketers of man-made gems have made to the Federal Trade Commission that would allow them to describe their merchandise as “cultured” diamonds. Sellers of natural jewelry and gemstones are vehemently opposed.
Lab-grown
“I sell both. I sell what my customer wants,” said Bierker, owner of Paul Michael Design, who created the engagement ring for Griffin. “Some people will say they really don’t want a diamond because they’re not comfortable with the social and ecological implications and things like that. Then I introduce the option of going with a full synthetic diamond.
“Sometimes they are interested in having that piece of carbon,” he said. “They are interested in the science of it and the whole panache behind it because it is becoming socially popular now. And that’s important. There’s big buzz on it.”
Bierker has specialized in creating custom jewelry for the past 20 years. He began selling synthetic diamonds about a year ago. He said more customers have been requesting them.
“I honestly think there is a fear in the market that synthetic diamonds will take a piece of the pie from the natural-diamond market,” Bierker said.
Diamond industry sources liken the process of creating a lab-grown diamond to growing a plant. You need a seed from another plant for a new one to grow. With lab-grown diamonds, a small slice of a natural diamond is used as the base or seed to grow new layers on top of the crystal until new diamonds are formed. That seed is scraped off and reused to grow new diamonds.
Same properties
SYNTHETIC diamonds are grown in a reactor that produces intense heat, about 8,000 degrees—about as hot as the outer layer of the sun. Inside the reactor, atoms stack on top of the natural diamond layer by layer until a pure, jewelry-grade diamond is formed.
Supporters say diamonds grown in laboratories also eliminate all possibility that a gem could be a “blood diamond”—mined in war zones for which people may have died and sold to finance violent activity.
John King, chief quality officer at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in New York, said, “Diamonds that are grown in a lab have essentially the same chemical properties and physical characteristics of natural diamonds.”
The GIA, is a nonprofit that ensures public trust through research education and laboratory services. The GIA does not buy or sell gems. It issues grading reports on diamonds and is the inventor of the 4Cs of diamond quality, a globally accepted standard for describing diamonds: color, clarity, cut and carat weight.
Naked eye
“WHEN the first synthetic diamonds were produced in the 1950s, they were industrial products,” King said. “In the 1970s we saw the first synthetics that were the quality we would see in gems and jewelry. Over decades with advances in technology, the quality and speed of producing them has increased.”
He said the technology has reached a point where even trained jewelers cannot tell the difference with the naked eye. Historically, he said, consumers have placed greater value on items that form under natural conditions.
“The most important thing from our prospective at GIA is all of these gems can have a place in the jewelry market,” King said. “But information about them must be disclosed so that the buying public knows what they are buying and can buy with confidence.”
Danny Baruch, vice president of American Grown Diamonds, a wholesale synthetic-diamond distributor that sells to more than 150 retailers throughout the country, said the company’s sales are growing month, over month, as more people become aware of the product. He said synthetic diamonds of the same weight and quality typically sell at a 25-percent discount to mined diamonds.
“People who may not have purchased a diamond in the past due to concerns of its origin, and it potentially being a blood diamond, they can purchase lab-grown diamonds with a clear conscience.”
And, by the way, Ashley Story, the 28-year-old recipient of the Harry Potter-themed engagement ring said yes.