Adoration for the fancy colored diamond

New names may have helped the once unpopular stone gain worldwide attention

Melanie Erickson has never liked diamonds all that much.

Until she noticed champagne-colored diamonds six years ago at markets and gem shows she visited for her business, the Bead Company in downtown Sioux Falls.

"I've never been a diamond person, but the minute I saw them I fell in love with them."

Now she owns a princess-cut champagne colored diamond ring with two bands of champagne diamonds surrounding the main stone.

April 4, 2008 By Dorene Weinstein found at argusleader.com dweinste@argusleader.com 

"I like things to be antique or have an eclectic look. It's not the same thing as everyone else has. It's something original and unique." The champagne- or cognac-colored diamonds look soft and antique, says the 34-year-old beader and jewelry designer.

Colored diamonds are popular but they aren't really new, says Paul Curtin, owner of Raymond's Jewellers. "I've carried them for 20 years."

The colored diamonds are available from department stores to upscale jewelers. They are experiencing an uptick in popularity, although demand has varied over the years.

Fifteen years ago promoters pushed colored diamonds, Curtin says.

The diamond company, De Beers, had an overabundance of brown diamonds and renamed them champagne and cognac to make them more desirable, says Alon Spektor, co-owner of The Diamond Room. "A champagne is a glorified brown diamond."

The gimmick caught on. After all, people have their own tastes about what's beautiful.

And celebrities helped.

Actress Cameron Diaz once wore a 20-carat cognac-colored diamond at the Academy Awards and Jennifer Love-Hewitt wore a 7-carat brown diamond ring, according to a colored diamond website.

Celebrities get national attention for what they wear on the red carpet, and that translates into an increased demand for colored diamonds, jewelers say.

Five billion dollars of champagne and cognac diamond jewelry is sold annually throughout the world, according to a colored diamond website.

There are over 300 colors of natural diamonds including pink, blue, yellow and green. Red is the most rare natural diamond. The most intensely colored stones are called fancies and are more rare and valuable than colorless diamonds. For example, a deep canary yellow diamond or a naturally occurring blue diamond are more valuable and costly than their colorless cousins.

An assortment of sizes of colored diamonds at The Diamond Room.Lloyd B. Cunningham / Argus Leader

"The color is what determines the price," says Spektor.

Trace elements in the stone helps determine the color. Over the millennium, naturally occurring radiation and intense pressure colors the stones. Nitrogen imparts a yellow or orange shade, boron gives a blue shade and hydrogen produces violet shades in a diamond.

Irradiating poorer quality diamonds in a lab will make them turn color and increase their value, jewelers say. "They take a lower grade diamond that may be brown or yellow and zap it with radiation. It can turn the diamond different colors, typically blue or blue green depending on what minerals are in the diamond," Curtin says.

Black diamonds can also be irradiated to make them more black and they're used in settings with colorless gems to increase the drama.

"A diamond that may have sold for a few hundred per carat you can now sell for a few thousand per carat," Curtin says.

Promotional ploy or not, colored diamonds are appealing.

"It's the originality," says Erickson. "People are realizing they don't have to do the same thing as everybody else."

Reach Dorene Weinstein at 331-2315

read also: natural color diamond association