Diamonds become a best friend to more women

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Purists may despise the invention of laboratory-grown diamonds, saying perhaps that what makes diamonds precious (or costly) is the billion years they take to form.

You know: dinosaur remains -- story and all.

Slowly but surely, simple logic seems to have started overriding the illusion of the value of mined diamonds, forged largely by the major mining firm De Beers, which crafted the "A diamond is forever" slogan.

The success of De Beers' campaign, which uses a celebrity couple marking their engagement with a diamond ring on the woman's left hand, has turned diamonds into a symbol of eternal love, thus spurring sales of the gem, especially in the United States and Japan.

The growing demand has caused diamond prices to skyrocket, making them more expensive than sapphires and rubies, which are a 1,000 times rarer than diamonds.

A carat of flawless white mined diamond can fetch US$16,000. One-and-a-half carats of diamond weigh 100 milligrams and are about the size of a kernel of corn.

Meanwhile, according to Rapaport Diamond Report, five large mining firms -- De Beers, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Alrosa and Leviev -- control 90 percent of the US$60 billion diamond market.

As a scientific invention now offers the same beauty at a much lower price, the large firms are reported to be in a cold sweat.

Recently, an article in the Feb. 14 edition of Newsweek magazine attested that lab-grown diamonds had fooled diamond experts on 47th Street, New York.

The history of synthetic diamonds goes back about 50 years. Companies like De Beers, Diamond Innovations (which were a part of General Electric) and Sumitomo Electric annually produce 100 tons of the mineral for industrial purposes.

The technology has now improved and several firms produce the mineral for use as jewelry.

One of the firms is Gemesis, Florida, U.S., where a warehouse in Sarasota houses two dozen high-pressure chambers.

Emulating the work of Mother Earth, the chambers, each about the size of a washing machine, can produce a one-carat, almost flawless diamond within three days.

Another method, known as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), uses a low-pressure technique.

A firm, Apollo Diamond, in Boston, uses this technique to produce diamonds for jewelry.

Newsweek reported that Gemesis sold their diamonds at a price only 75 percent less than that for natural items, while Apollo planned to sell their gems late this year at prices 10 percent to 30 percent below those of natural diamonds.

However, various sources on the Internet reveal that other firms in the U.S. and Europe produced lab-grown diamonds before Gemesis and Apollo.

Sussex-based firm LifeGem has an even more interesting offer. They can turn the ashes of your beloved pets to diamonds.

Cremated remains consist partially of carbon, so the company can purify the ashes and turn them into diamond.

Last year, widow Lin Tandy from Berkshire. U.K., made three diamonds from her late husband's ashes, geologist Brian Tandy, 51.

Lin and her daughters, Gayle, 25, and Claire, 21, now sport the diamonds as rings.

While some people may flinch at the idea of turning human remains into diamonds, the family thought it was just fine.

"It was something they could keep close to them and be a constant reminder," Lin was quoted as saying by BBC News online.

Beside being a winner price-wise, lab-grown gems are also perceived as being more politically correct than mined diamonds.

As a lot of economic -- and sometimes political -- interests become involved in this affluent business, some diamonds mined from countries like South Africa are tarnished by conflict, and even war.

Indeed, regulations ensure that diamonds at Tiffany's, for example, are not laden with a conflict-ridden past.

However, an Amnesty International investigator once found that more than half the diamond traders in the U.K. and the U.S. were oblivious to conflict diamond policies.

So, for those who want to make sure that they do not enjoy beauty at the expense of African children, lab-grown gems might be the ideal choice.