The History of Diamond Cutting
The history of diamond cutting is not a sequence of inventions in which one genius replaces another, but a centuries-long evolution of tools, knowledge, trade, and aesthetic expectations. Throughout that history, the purpose of processing itself also changed. In the earliest periods, the aim was to preserve value while altering the natural crystal as little as possible. Later, cutters deliberately sacrificed weight to obtain a more regular shape, more facets, and a livelier play of light. The industrial age brought machines, measuring instruments, and more standardized processes; today, 3D scanning and computer planning enable optimization that earlier generations could not have imagined.
It is important to distinguish three things: the history of cutting techniques, the history of an individual cut type, and the attribution of a specific old stone. This chapter addresses the first. Whether a particular diamond is truly an original old mine, old European, or another historic cut—and how it can be distinguished from a modern reproduction—is discussed in Chapter 23.
[VISUAL 16.1: Timeline—natural crystal → point/table → rose → early brilliant → old mine → old European → transitional → modern round brilliant → laser and 3D planning]
Before the Cut: The Crystal as a Finished Precious Object
The earliest diamonds were not necessarily cut in the modern sense. A natural octahedral crystal could be valued for its hardness, the luster of its natural faces, its regularity, and its rarity, and could be set into an object almost as it was found.
Such a stone should not automatically be called a point cut. A historic cut presupposes deliberate work: polishing, correcting, or reshaping the surface. Distinguishing a natural crystal from an early worked stone is difficult when no documented archaeological context exists, because later polishing, damage, and recutting may erase some of the evidence.
An additional technical problem arises from the nature of diamond itself. Its exceptional hardness and anisotropy mean that it cannot be polished with equal ease in every crystallographic direction. Early diamond working was not merely a matter of finding an abrasive hard enough for the task, but also of learning which directions could be polished in a controlled way.
Point and Table: From Crystal to Geometry
The point cut can be seen as an early attempt to idealize the natural octahedron. Faces are corrected and polished, and edges brought into alignment, but the crystal’s fundamental logic is preserved. Such a stone does not yet have the developed optical system of crown and pavilion found in brilliant cuts.
The table cut represents an important conceptual transition. Removing or flattening one point creates a table facet, and the crystal is no longer treated solely as a natural form to be embellished, but as material whose geometry can be consciously redesigned.
Later table-cut variants acquired additional cut corners and auxiliary facets. Early step-style facet arrangements also developed from this logic. There was no single moment at which the “table cut” became fully standardized; it is a family of historical solutions.
The Scaife and Caution About the Story of a Single Inventor
Popular histories often describe Lodewijk van Bercken as the man who invented the scaife in the 15th century, discovered polishing with diamond powder, and thereby virtually created modern diamond cutting. This story should be treated with caution.
Diamond working existed in Europe before the period associated with Van Bercken. It is more reasonable to speak of the development and improvement of the rotating polishing wheel, better retention of diamond powder, and a growing ability to produce facets that were more regular and better aligned with one another. Contemporary documents do not always allow the exact authorship of individual innovations to be established.
This is a general rule in the early history of crafts: later literature often attributes a technological leap to a famous individual, turning a complex development into a tidy biographical story. In this book, such attributions are qualified according to the strength of the evidence.
The Rose Cut: A Different Path Toward Light
A family of rose cuts developed from the 16th and 17th centuries onward. A classic rose does not have a developed pavilion and table facet like a brilliant. The underside is generally flat, while the upper portion forms a faceted dome.
The rose cut is important because it demonstrates that the history of cutting was not simply a journey toward the modern round brilliant. For centuries, different aesthetic aims, setting methods, and ways of using light existed side by side. In closed-back settings and under historic lighting conditions, a rose cut could create a highly attractive appearance while making efficient use of thinner rough.
The facet counts and names assigned to individual historic rose cuts vary among sources and periods, so they should not be reduced to a single universal standard.
The Emergence of the Brilliant Philosophy
The development of the brilliant style was a greater conceptual leap than merely adding facets. The crown and pavilion began to function as a coordinated optical system: light entered through the upper part of the stone, reflected multiple times, and returned to the observer as white and spectral flashes.
Early brilliants did not have to be round. Historic drawings and descriptions show brilliant arrangements on various outlines. It is therefore essential to distinguish clearly among:
- shape—the stone’s external outline;
- cutting style / facet arrangement—the organization of the facets;
- cut quality—the quality of execution and the optical result.
At first, “brilliant” primarily described a faceting style, not a perfectly round stone.
Mazarin and Peruzzi: Tradition Is Not the Same as a Documented Invention
Many chronologies present a tidy sequence: single cut → Mazarin/double cut → Peruzzi/triple cut → old mine. This is useful as a teaching outline, but the historical evidence is not strong enough to attribute each change to one person.
Cardinal Jules Mazarin was an important historical figure and the owner of celebrated diamonds, but his name alone does not prove that he invented a particular facet arrangement. Similarly, Vincenzo Peruzzi is traditionally credited with a more advanced brilliant arrangement that added facets, but the attribution should be presented as historically established tradition rather than as a proven, patented invention.
The safer conclusion is that during the 17th and 18th centuries, a brilliant architecture with numerous crown and pavilion facets gradually took shape, while later nomenclature assigned names to that development that the cutters themselves did not always use at the time.
Old Mine: A Brilliant That Follows the Rough
What is now called an old mine cut is most often a softly squared or irregular cushion-shaped brilliant with a high crown, smaller table facet, deeper pavilion, short lower halves, and a more visible culet.
This geometry was not arbitrary. The cutter worked with a specific rough and tried to retain valuable weight. The natural octahedral form often led to a square-rounded outline. Hand bruting did not produce perfect circles, so two old stones of the same general type can differ substantially.
The term “old mine cut” is itself historically complex. In earlier periods, such stones might simply have been called brilliants; the name developed later in trade language. The modern category is therefore not proof that a historic owner or cutter used that exact term.
Mechanical Bruting and Henry Morse
One of the most important transitions of the 19th century was the development of mechanical bruting. GIA’s own historical sources are not completely consistent about who created the first bruting machine: some texts credit Henry D. Morse, others Morse with the help of his workshop manager, while a GIA research review from June 2026 explicitly states that the machine was being developed by his shop foreman at the same time Morse was working on angles and proportions. What can be stated securely is that Morse’s work in Boston and his workshop during the 1870s, together with mechanized bruting around 1873, enabled much more precise circular shaping of the girdle. Morse also used angle measurements and experimented with proportions, emphasizing that value lay not only in preserving carat weight but also in cut quality.
This changed the economics of production. Cutters could sacrifice rough more deliberately in order to achieve a more regular outline and better optical performance. By the late 19th century, the circular brilliant was gradually becoming more geometrically precise.
[VISUAL 16.2: Hand bruting with two diamonds versus a mechanical bruting machine—the effect on girdle roundness]
Old European and Transitional: A Continuum, Not Two Templates
The old European cut is associated with the ability to create a more regular circular outline. Compared with the modern round brilliant, it commonly has a small table facet, a high crown, greater total depth, short lower halves, and a visible culet.
But “old European” is not a single mathematical specification. Historic stones show wide variation.
The same applies to the transitional cut. It is not one official design, but a group of intermediate forms between the older European styles and the more modern round brilliant. During the transition, table facets generally became larger, lower halves longer, culets smaller, and symmetry and roundness more regular—but these changes did not occur at the same rate in every workshop and period.
Marcel Tolkowsky and 1919
In 1919, Marcel Tolkowsky published Diamond Design: A Study of the Reflection and Refraction of Light in a Diamond. His work became one of the most influential theoretical landmarks in the history of the round brilliant.
For one model, Tolkowsky obtained approximately:
- a table facet measuring 53% of the diameter;
- a crown angle of 34.5°;
- a pavilion angle of 40.75°;
- a total depth of about 59.3% in a model with no realistic girdle thickness.
These figures have enormous historical significance, but they must not be turned into natural law. The model was developed using the simplified assumptions of its time and did not encompass every multiple light path, today’s 3D measurement data, differing lighting conditions, or the modern empirical base of large numbers of observed diamonds.
Modern cut-grading systems therefore do not reduce quality to the distance from a single Tolkowsky point. GIA’s later research showed that a broader space of proportion combinations can produce a high-quality appearance.
[VISUAL 16.3: Tolkowsky’s historical model versus the modern multidimensional space of proportions—without marking one point as universally “ideal”]
The Modern Round Brilliant
The standard round brilliant is usually described as having 57 facets when the culet is not faceted, or 58 when a culet facet is present. Its importance lies not only in the number of facets but in their organization: the table facet, eight crown mains, eight star facets, sixteen upper halves, eight pavilion mains, and sixteen lower halves form a coherent optical system.
During the 20th century, the language of measurement, laboratory reporting, and expectations of symmetry became standardized. At the same time, different workshops and markets continued to use different combinations of proportions. “Modern round brilliant” therefore denotes a standardized facet arrangement, not a single permitted profile.
Lasers, Scanning, and Computer Planning
The laser broadened the possibilities for dividing and shaping rough because it permits precise cuts that do not depend in the same way on traditional cleavage planes or mechanical contact. An even greater change occurred when 3D scanning was combined with this technology.
A modern workflow can include:
- a digital 3D model of the rough;
- mapping internal inclusions;
- generating a large number of possible polished solutions;
- estimating weight, shape, clarity, color, and expected value;
- precise marking and laser division;
- monitoring the result during manufacturing.
The computer does not replace gemological and manufacturing judgment. It makes it possible to search an enormous number of geometric possibilities. The quality of the result still depends on scan accuracy, inclusion interpretation, market assumptions, risk, and the cutter’s execution.
Automation Is Not the End of Cutting History
Today’s automation can control facet position, angle, polishing, transitions between manufacturing stages, and comparison with a specified digital model. Algorithms can help optimize a plan and detect deviations.
But the history of cutting shows that the objective has never been geometric precision alone. Sometimes weight is preserved; sometimes optical performance, fancy color, historic character, or rare original architecture is more important. The most precise machine cannot independently determine which of these values matters most for a specific stone.
Four Things That Must Not Be Confused
Market language often conflates:
- an original historic cut—a stone that has retained its historical workmanship;
- a historic stone that has been recut—the material may be old, but its present geometry is not necessarily original;
- a modern reproduction of a historic cut—a recently cut stone deliberately made in an older style;
- a marketing term such as “antique-style”—a description of appearance that, by itself, proves neither age nor provenance.
A full forensic and gemological discussion of this distinction follows in Chapter 23.
Chapter Summary
- The earliest valued diamonds were not necessarily cut; a natural crystal and a point cut are not the same category.
- The table cut marks the transition from preserving the natural form to deliberate geometric design.
- Historical attributions to Van Bercken, Mazarin, and Peruzzi must be distinguished from what is directly documented.
- The rose cut represents a parallel historical tradition, not merely an “unfinished brilliant.”
- “Brilliant” originally described a faceting style, not necessarily a round shape.
- Old mine cuts strongly reflect the form of the rough and hand craftsmanship.
- Mechanical bruting in the 19th century enabled more regular round outlines and greater control over proportions.
- Old European and transitional cuts are not fixed designs but historical groups with variation.
- Tolkowsky’s 1919 model is a fundamental historical reference, not a universal modern law of ideal proportions.
- The modern round brilliant standardizes a facet arrangement, not one unique geometry.
- Lasers, 3D scanning, and computer planning have dramatically changed manufacturing but have not eliminated the need for expert judgment.
- A historic cut, a recut old stone, a modern reproduction, and the marketing term “antique cut” must be distinguished.