DIAMONT

The diamond is the king of the precious stones. The name comes from the ancient Greek word adamas, which means uncontrollable and stands for ever lasting loyalty. The old Greek believed that splendour of a diamond symbols the fire of the ever lasting love. Today the diamond is still the symbol of love in the engagement- / wedding ring. The diamond is the hardest precious stone and the hardest known mineral. Besides he excels by the high splendour, which means the skill to analyse white light into a big variety of colours and radiate them again. Diamonds are colourless in general, but because of mixing with foreign elements, all sorts of colour arise. The worldproduction on a yearly base is more then 50 million carat. But at least 20 ton of stone have to get through for getting 1 carat of ornament diamond. These proportions underline the big rarity of the king of precious stones. Other important finding-places for diamonds are South-Africa, Borneo , Australia , India , Brasil and Sierra Leone . For meeting his importance a special cut was developed, namely a brilliantcut with 57 facetts. So a brilliant is a diamond with a brilliantcut. As magnifiying-glass-perfect, of utmost quality, we call diamonds where you don''t see even one impurity with a tenfold magnifiying-glass. Next to the colourless stones the stones in fantasycolours ( strong blue, red or yellow) are very much desired. The biggest wellknown diamonds are very often inseparable with history, as a part of a capture, bribery or trousseau. The green Dresdner is an old Indian diamond of 41 carat and his recent stay is unknown. The Koh-i-noor, or "mountain of light" comes from India. Nowadays he is property of the English kingdom. The Cullinan is the biggest till now found diamond, he was bought by the government of Transvaal and was a gift for the English Crown.