Cut and Designs: Why Are They Important?

Cut and Designs: Why Are They Important?

Feb 15

Written By Rana Levy

One might wonder why my gemstones, especially my lab gemstones, are more expensive than lab gemstones found from overseas vendors or Ebay/estate sales, etc.

Designs, optimizing, and facet meets! Great polish and no wonky heights, girdles, or pavillions.

Designs are a huge part of what makes your custom-cut stone from me special. Myself and most of my colleagues and other gem cutters strive to either create, optimize, or use designs that show the gemstone in its best light. We want our stones to stand out from the rest and to provide something unique and special that only you will have.

Below is an example of a commercial cut stone versus one of my friend’s designs, Arya Akhavan, cut by me.

Commercial Cut Sapphire

Window at bottom, bad meets, oddly shaped to save weight, low pavilion and crown

Custom Cut Sapphire

Design is called Lassitude by Arya Akhavan, cut by me. Beautiful pattern, good light return, optimized design, good symmetry, meets and polish

Lab Padparadsha Hex in my personal design
”Youre Such a Snowflake”

Perfect meets and symmetry, great polish, very nice light return and pattern, unique design that you can only get from me!

Ebay Lab Sapphire

This gem is actually faceted well, in that the meets are nicely matching and there is good symmetry. Overall not a bad stone, but the design has poor light return and is likely not optimized.

My lab sapphire in Scott Labories design Titan

Gorgeous color, good meets, great polish and dimensions and symmetry

Now you can see the difference visually in a very common commercial cut stone verus a precision cut stone.

Precision cutting stones does take time. There is a labor factor involved in cutting technically well and with intention, whereas sometimes cutting stones for cheap to get them out in the market has value with larger companies.

If you do buy from a precision gem cutter - you will notice their photos and work have beautiful detail and care. Every gem cutter I know, as well as myself, has the highest standards possible for providing beautiful work - but even precision gem cutters do not get 100% perfect stones every single time. Gem Cutting Competitions exist for this exact thing!

Stones for cutting competitions can take weeks, or months to prepare the absolute perfect gemstone possible on the planet. One can only imagine the time and effort spent on these spectacular pieces! Of course - clients cannot expect this extreme level of artistry on their gemstones. The cost would be enormous and outrageous for this type of work, as competition-winner stones are worth so much. But you are paying for something extremely close, if not competition worthy!