There is an ongoing debate, predominately in the Jewellery Industry, about synthetic diamonds. Want my thoughts? Probably not, but just like force feeding geese to make foie gras, I'll ram this opinion down your gullet.
Goes without saving, the general consensus in the industry goes strongly against these 'fake' diamonds. They feel that the artificial nature of the stone takes away from the true value of millions of years a diamond takes to brew under heat and pressure. As well as the 'precious' price of real diamonds being at risk.
Honestly, I am all for the imposter diamonds, bring them in and lets disrupt the farce of scarce and 'invaluable' diamonds.
Look lets be honest, the entire diamond industry is a complete piss-take anyway. Firstly, they're not scarce at all. The largest diamond traders in the world will artificially keep prices high, by buying up and controlling supplies. Secondly, why are we comfortable and content to leave the manipulation of flow and cost in the hands of a very select few?
With margins being so tight the world-over, profits are harboured in small questionable corners of the industry, so the ethical mining and production of real diamonds comes into play.
I am not even really sure of how lab-grown diamonds are produced, I'm assuming its slightly more than throwing a lump of Bunnings coal briquettes in the mirco-wave for an an hour and half. I'd say there is some genuine hard laboured skill and science to cook up one of these bad boys. We glorify every other part of an artisan's, hand-made approach, so why not this ay? I get the obvious responses, but I am just fumbling around with some ideas here... I think it is probably the 'lab' nature to the production that throws people off. If they ditched the lab-coat for a leather apron, swapped out the test tubes for a raw-hide mallet and gave the beakers wooden handles, everyone would be singing a very different tune.
All this being said, I don't want a counterfeit approach to selling synthetic diamonds as real diamonds. I believe the responsibility is now on the jeweller to tell this story and lay out the options of lab-created stones. I just purely want both possibilities to exist and complete clarity on either approach.
As a small jewellery company ourselves, I guess there is something I like about nipping at the heels of large corps, disrupting industry and carving out your own niche. The opportunity to do so for lab-grown diamonds is tasty and will be snapped up soon. In all our pieces, we do actually use all real diamonds, however I love that new options are poking their mug up. Here at CHD do use real diamonds in all our pieces, as we are predominately using small stones to set in signets, however I love the new options popping their mugs up.