Diamond News Archives

As the pandemic-sired recession persists into 2021, even-lower inflation if not deflation looms.

Amazing times all around. Most astounding perhaps the level of complacency building in markets into the US election and into year end. Most of the market appears to have adopted a see no risk attit…

(IDEX Online) - Diamonds discovered at a gold deposit in Canada hint at a large and untapped reserve, say researchers.

They are in sediments that are "an exact analog" of those in South Africa's famous Witwatersrand Goldfields, replicating the extremely rare combination of gold and diamonds in the same place.

Experts from the University of Alberta were astonished by the find at outcrop at Nunavut, the most northerly territory of Canada.

"My jaw hit the floor," said Graham Pearson, researcher in the Faculty of Science and Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate in Arctic Resources.

"Normally people would take hundreds of kilograms, if not tons of samples, to try and find that many diamonds. 

"We managed to find diamonds in 15 kilos of rock that we sampled with a sledgehammer on a surface outcrop.

"Diamonds and gold are very strange bedfellows. They hardly ever appear in the same rock, so this new find may help to sweeten the attractiveness of the original gold discovery if we can find more diamonds."

The diamonds recovered so far are too small to be economic - less than 1mm diameter - but they occur in ancient sediments that are an exact analog of Witwatersrand, which has produced more than 40 per cent of all the gold ever mined worldwide.

Pic courtesy University of Alberta shows pebbly rock containing the rare combination of gold and diamonds...

(IDEX Online) - British fashion designer Debbie Wingham created a breathtaking $26m diamond-encrusted party dress for a billionaire birthday girl.

It was studded with 15 red diamonds, from one and a half to four carats worth $23.8m in total, plus a host of other gems.

Wingham has a reputation for adding extravagant sparkle to cake and couture for the ultra-rich.  In 2015 she baked and decorated a 6ft-long cake decorated with 400 one-carat and 35 three-carat white diamonds and 75 three-carat black diamonds at a cost of $74m.

Her latest venture was a party dress for an unnamed Lebanese client, who celebrated her 40th in style with a main party at her her mansion in Mijas, Spain, and 20 lavish lockdown parties for her friends around the world, each of whom received a $4,000 goody bag.

Centerpiece of the whole extravaganza was Wingham's modern take on the traditional Middle Eastern abaya dress that was literally dripping with diamonds.

As well as the super-rare red diamonds, it featured, according to the Daily Mail newspaper, 20 three-carat black diamonds worth $195,000; 10, three-carat white diamonds worth $780,000; one blue diamond just under three carats worth $130,000 and six, two-and-half carat yellow diamonds worth $5450,000.

It was finished off with 4,000 tiny single-carat diamonds worth $130,000 and 1,000 fresh-water pearls valued at $105,000.

Pic: Instagram...