Thoughts on jewellery, stones, and meaning. Published infrequently. Only when there is something worth saying.
A personal note from the World Diamond Congress, where two major mine closures broke while the room was still full, one day and two days before the closing ceremony.
Read the note →The World Diamond Congress closed with a jewellery historian's account of Indian diamond history, from an 11th century temple that catalogued 6,000 diamonds to a formal industry motion retiring the term lab-grown.
Read the note →Colour was never a property of the rough. It depends on how long light stays trapped before it escapes. On a cutting decision, a new pricing tool, and the value gap nobody has fully solved.
Read the note →Two very different technologies, one very old problem: stones quietly switched inside cutting factories. On what proving a diamond's identity actually looks like, from the World Diamond Congress.
Read the note →GIA's new CEO confirmed the organisation's stake in Tracr, and it isn't really about traceability. On governance, a widening wealth gap, and the numbers behind the trust.
Read the note →The industry's succession problem isn't a shortage of young people. It's a shortage of anyone showing them the door in. On the WhatsApp group that became infrastructure.
Read the note →A dealer trade body stopped softening the word. On stage, in front of the room, the language changed from lab-grown to synthetic. Notes from the World Diamond Congress.
Read the note →Hong Kong's diamond trade drew a hard line between natural and lab-grown decades ago. A quieter US practice draws none at all. On which instinct the trade actually trusts.
Read the note →Lab diamonds are marketed as the responsible alternative. Conflict-free, sustainable, modern. It is a clean story. It is also an incomplete one. On the human cost that nobody in the industry is talking about.
Read the note →On what happened to the emerald market when the industry failed to draw the line in time. A preface to a more current conversation.
Read the note →The name is French for you and me. Not you and your twin. Somewhere along the way, the market kept the name and lost the meaning. We are saying something.
Read the note →A note on Design Notes.
This is not a blog. There is no schedule, no content calendar, no obligation to post. Design Notes appears when we have something to say. About a design, a stone, an idea, or something the industry has got quietly wrong. If you are reading this, you probably care about the same things we do.