By
Ashley Bailey, Wednesday, August 02, 2006 12:00 AM
A diamond grading report from a recognized gem lab is not just a pedigree but a passport. As more consumers have become aware of certificates, they have insisted on them as objective third-party opinions about the nature and quality of stones they are buying. Sale of stones is often dependent on these documents. No paper, no sale.
Given the importance of certificates to the buying public, De Beers and the world's leading diamond trade organizations have tried to get major labs to refrain from issuing them for synthetic (man-made) and treated diamonds. The inability for certain types of diamonds to get grading reports would, it is believed, stigmatize and isolate them - thus act as a sales deterrent.
Some gemologists counter that all diamonds should be certified so that consumers will know their exact nature - whether natural or manmade, whether treated or treatment-free. No solitaire diamond, they say, should be sold without identification papers from a reputable lab.
The end-result is a lab-by-lab patchwork policy regarding diamond certification. Although neither GIA or AGS certify synthetic diamonds, some American labs are doing so.
At its 2004 Congress held in October, the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) asked all labs to refrain from issuing reports on synthetic diamonds. In effect, the group was asking for implicit censure of such stones by depriving them of the kind of documentation given to natural diamonds.
What's more, the group asked labs to more clearly and conspicuously identify treatments of natural stones, especially high pressure high temperature
(HPHT) color alterations. In 1999, when GIA agreed to issue certificates for General Electric stones whitened and blued by this method, it caused a major furor in the market. Having failed to persuade GIA to cease issuing reports on these stones, it is now asking that lab, and all others which certify HPHT diamonds, to state clearly and unmistakably that stones have been doctored in this manner. Although users of the GE process argue that it is a mild adjustment of, rather than intervention in, nature, the trade rejects this logic and has been asking HPHT stones to be identified as what they are: treated.
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