Collection: Old Cut Diamonds

Old cut is the general term for diamonds cut before the modern round brilliant, roughly from the 1700s through to the 1930s. They were cut by hand, by eye, to catch candlelight rather than electric light — which gives them a softer, warmer, more romantic character than anything cut today. The two you will encounter most are the old mine cut and the old European cut.

Both are early brilliants and both have a small table, a high crown, a deep pavilion and usually an open culet — the flat facet at the point that shows as a small circle when you look straight down.

The old mine cut is the older of the two, roughly 1700s to late 1800s. It has a squarish, cushion-shaped outline with rounded corners, because cutters followed the natural shape of the rough rather than fighting it.

The old European cut came next, from about 1890 to the 1930s, once bruting machines allowed a properly circular outline. It is round, with the same chunky faceting and high crown.

Both are also called antique cuts, and you will see them described as old cut diamonds generally.

Genuinely, yes — most were cut between a hundred and two hundred and fifty years ago, and each one was shaped by hand by a cutter working without modern optics or machinery. That is why no two are quite alike.

It is worth knowing that some modern stones are cut in the old style. They are often called old European cut or antique cut, and while they can be lovely, they are new stones made to look old. A true antique cut has small irregularities, slight asymmetries, and a character that comes from being made by hand. We can tell you which you are looking at.

The light behaves entirely differently. A modern round brilliant is engineered for maximum white light return and produces bright, fast, fragmented sparkle. An old cut has fewer, larger facets and a high crown, so it gives broad, slow, rolling flashes with far more fire — coloured light rather than white. Under a lamp a modern stone wins; in candlelight or evening light, an old cut has a glow nothing modern reproduces.

The open culet is also visible as a small circle at the centre when you look down into the stone. Some people love it; it is the clearest sign you are looking at something old.

For the right person, very much. You get genuine age, a stone that is entirely individual, and a look you cannot buy new. They are also often better value per carat than a modern brilliant of equivalent weight, because they are graded against modern standards that were never designed for them.

They are not for everyone. If what you want is maximum brightness and a stone that performs consistently under any light, a modern round will suit you better. Old cuts ask you to appreciate something different.

Relax the modern rules. Old cuts were cut from rough that was rarely colourless, and a slightly warm tone suits the character of the stone — many people prefer it, particularly in yellow gold. Inclusions are similarly forgiving, since the chunky faceting and lower light return disguise them well. Judge these stones by eye rather than by grade; the certificate matters much less here than in any other category.

No. GIA's cut grading applies only to modern round brilliants, and old cuts sit well outside those proportion ranges by design. A report will describe the stone and grade colour and clarity, but nothing on it tells you whether the diamond is beautiful. With antique stones that is normal — you buy them with your eyes.

Vintage-inspired settings are the natural home. Milgrain edges, filigree work, a raised gallery, engraved shoulders — details that belong to the era the stone came from. A hand-crafted setting suits an old cut in a way a modern stock mount never quite does.

Solitaire in a simple bezel or a claw setting with a fine band works beautifully, particularly if you want the stone to feel old without the ring looking costume.

Three stone with two smaller old cuts either side is a properly period arrangement, and it is how many original rings were made.

Art Deco inspired designs suit old European cuts especially well, since those are the stones that were actually being set in that period.

Yellow and rose gold tend to flatter old cuts more than white metals, warming the stone rather than exposing its colour.

All made to order in our own workshop, built around your stone.

Art Deco ran from roughly 1920 to 1935, and the jewellery of that period has a distinct logic: geometry over ornament, symmetry, strong lines, contrast. The diamond shapes that suit it are the ones cut in that era or designed on the same principles.

Asscher and emerald cuts are the definitive Art Deco stones. Both are step cuts with clean straight facets, and both were at their most popular precisely when the style was. Nothing else sits so naturally in a Deco setting.

Baguettes and tapered baguettes are the period's signature side stone. Long, rectangular, step cut — they were used everywhere in the 1920s and 30s and they are what gives a Deco ring its architectural line.

Old cut diamonds — old European and old mine cuts — bring genuine period character. They were the stones actually being set at the time, and their softer, warmer light is quite different from a modern brilliant.

Trilliants, half-moons, trapezoids and calibré-cut stones were used to build the geometric patterns the style is known for, fitted precisely against the centre stone rather than simply flanking it.

Cushions and round brilliants work too, particularly in a stepped or geometric setting, though they read as less period-specific.

What matters as much as the stones is how they are set — clean lines, symmetry, milgrain edges, a raised geometric gallery, and often a contrast of white metal against dark accents. Original Deco pieces were made in platinum, and platinum still suits the style best.

This is work we do a great deal of, either as a new piece designed in the period style or as a remodel of an inherited ring. All made to order in our own workshop.

Yes, and it is work we do regularly.

Replacing a stone in an antique setting is harder than it sounds. The new diamond has to match the original in cut style, outline, proportion and colour — an old European cut sitting next to a modern brilliant looks wrong immediately, even to someone who could not say why. It also has to fit the existing seat in the mount, which means matching millimetre dimensions and depth rather than carat weight. A stone that is correct on paper but a fraction too deep will not sit.

So bring the ring in and let us look at it. We will measure the empty setting, work out exactly what is needed, and search for a genuine old cut of the right size, cut style and colour to sit properly with the stones around it. Sometimes we have something suitable already; more often we go looking, and that can take a little time — antique stones do not come in standard sizes.

If a perfect match genuinely is not findable, we will tell you and talk through the alternatives — including whether a closely matched stone in a slightly different size works better than a compromise on cut style, or whether re-setting the piece differently makes more sense.

We also handle the repair side. Worn claws, a stretched or thinning shank, a setting that has lost its shape after a century of wear — all of it can be done properly in our own workshop, and it is worth doing at the same time as the stone. There is no point setting a valuable diamond into a mount that is about to fail.

If the ring has been in your family, tell us that too. It changes how we approach it.

Because our images and videos are taken at high magnification — far closer than any human eye gets to a diamond, and far closer than the standard the stone was graded to.

Clarity grading is done under 10x magnification. That is the international standard: a grader with a 10x loupe decides whether an inclusion is there and how it affects the grade. Online photography routinely runs at twenty, thirty times life size or more, so you are seeing the stone at several times the magnification GIA used to grade it. An inclusion that fills your screen may be something the grader needed a loupe to find at all.

Colour matters too. A white or transparent inclusion — a feather, a cloud, a crystal without body colour — is far harder to see than a dark carbon spot of the same size, because there is little contrast against the diamond around it. Two stones can carry the same grade and look entirely different in the hand for that reason alone.

We photograph at high magnification deliberately. We would rather show you everything than shoot a diamond flatteringly and have you surprised later. But an inclusion that looks obvious on screen is very often invisible in the hand, at arm's length, on a moving finger, in ordinary light.

The grade tells you what is there. The magnification tells you where. Neither tells you whether you would ever notice it — that is a judgement we make face-up, under proper light, on every stone we hold.

Considerably, and it is worth knowing before you compare stones in different places.

Jewellery displays are lit to sell. Rows of halogen or bright LED spots directly above the case flood the stone with intense, concentrated light from every angle. That produces maximum sparkle and, at the same time, washes out inclusions — the scintillation is so busy that small imperfections simply disappear into it. A diamond in a well-lit display case is showing you close to the best it will ever look.

Daylight is the opposite. Soft, diffuse, coming from one direction. Sparkle is quieter, and anything inside the stone has nowhere to hide. Diamond grading uses controlled, colour-balanced daylight-equivalent lighting for exactly that reason — it is neutral, and it is reproducible.

Neither light is dishonest. But if you look at a stone under spotlights and then take it outside, you will see a different diamond, and most of a ring's life is spent in ordinary light.

When you view diamonds with us, you see them under professional diamond grading lights — the same neutral, colour-balanced lighting the laboratories use — and in natural daylight. No spotlit display case. If a stone looks right under those conditions, it will look right anywhere.

Always, and we would insist on it.

A single diamond on its own looks excellent. There is nothing to measure it against, so your eye accepts it. Put a second stone beside it and differences appear immediately that you would never have seen alone — one reads slightly warmer, one has more life, one throws broader flashes while the other glitters more finely.

This is how the trade buys, and it is the only reliable way to judge colour in particular. Colour grading is comparative by definition: graders work against a set of masterstones, not from memory. Your eye works the same way. Two stones a grade apart are obvious side by side and almost impossible to separate one at a time.

So we will put several in front of you. Sometimes that means you choose a lower grade than you came in for because you genuinely prefer how it looks, and sometimes it means you spend a little more because you can finally see the difference. Either way you will know why, which is the point.

No. Every diamond we sell is a natural diamond, and we've never dealt in lab-grown, simulants or treated stones.

A lab-grown stone is a manufactured product. It's grown in a reactor over a few weeks, then mass produced in unlimited quantities in any size or grade. That's the fundamental difference: a natural diamond took billions of years to form and exists in finite supply, while a laboratory-grown one is a commodity with no ceiling on production. It shows in the pricing — as capacity has scaled, lab-grown prices have fallen steeply and continue to fall, and there is no established secondary market for them.

What you're buying with a natural diamond is scarcity and origin. Rare, and natural. It's why we've never sold anything else. Read our full comparison of natural and lab-grown diamonds.

Our diamonds are independently certified, most commonly by GIA, with others graded by DCLA or HRD. The certificate is issued by the laboratory, not by us, and it accompanies the stone when it ships.

Yes. We are in Sydney's CBD and we see clients by appointment, so you can view stones side by side and compare them in person before deciding.

Just ask us. Finding a particular stone is a large part of what we do, and there's no obligation when you enquire. We'll do our best to source the finest quality natural diamond for you.

Our list is smaller than you'll see on some sites, and that's deliberate. Every diamond here is one we've looked at properly before listing it. Many diamond websites show tens or hundreds of thousands of stones drawn from shared trade lists — diamonds held elsewhere that the seller hasn't seen and won't see unless you order one. It looks like more choice, but nobody has assessed the individual stone, and two diamonds with the same details on paper can look quite different.

So if what you want isn't here, tell us what you're after and what you'd like to spend. We'll look for it, check anything we find ourselves, and only show you stones we'd be happy to recommend. If we can't find the right thing at your budget, we'll say so and talk through the options — sometimes a small change in colour, clarity or size makes all the difference.

Either way, you'll only ever be offered a diamond that we have complete confidence in recommending to you, and it will not just be based on the cheapest price.

Yes. Most clients select the diamond first and then the setting — either one of our existing designs or a fully custom piece made to your description or an image. Everything is handmade by our own jewellers.

Yes. We have many loyal customers all over Australia, and we're able to consult by phone and share photos and videos whenever possible.

Distance is not the obstacle people expect. We'll guide you through the options and select the finest quality diamonds and gemstones for you, so you can make an informed decision from wherever you are. The same applies to custom made engagement rings and jewellery — we'll talk you through it and keep you across it as it's made.

We deliver fully insured anywhere in Australia — every capital city, and regional and rural addresses just the same.

If you are able to come in, we'd always rather show you the stones in person — and if you're travelling to Sydney, appointments can be arranged on weekends.

Tell us what you are after and we will show you what we hold. Old cuts come to us individually rather than in a steady supply, so what is available changes — if nothing here suits, tell us and we will look. On these stones we would say buy the one you respond to rather than the one with the best paperwork. We are a diamond merchant, not a retail jeweller, and you will deal directly with Daniel throughout.