Diamond care may be performed with special equipment, such as a home ultrasonic cleaner, but in most cases, the same home care routine that you give to your fine jewelry pieces is enough for keeping diamond clear.

Your jeweler may advise you to schedule a professional cleaning once a year. This service will also guarantee a security check to avoid losing the gem by checking the setting.

The metal pieces of your diamond setting also require special care. Whether mounted in gold, silver, platinum, or any other semi precious metal, your diamond should no be exposed to chlorine, a substance which damages metal irreversibly by discoloring the mounting.

Avoid using your diamond setting when you are doing rough work. A Diamond is hard, but depending on its cut, it might be susceptible to being chipped. Do not wear your diamond jewelry either if you are going to work with household chemicals or chlorine bleach.

Do not touch any diamond with your fingers and clean it by holding its edges instead. Use a soft dry cloth on its surface for regular daily cleaning using mild, soapy water once per week.

A soap and water solution is in fact, the best cleaner for all your jewelry. Be careful with commercial cleaning solutions that often contain chemicals. A mild, non-abrasive soap dissolved in water and a soft brush is the only items you need for basic jewelry care.

However, your jeweler can recommend a cleaning solution especially designed to clean fine jewelry or expressly diamonds. Some professionals may recommend a solution made of one part of household ammonia, one part of mild detergent, and three parts of water to clean fine gems.

Always dry your diamonds with a lint-free towel to keep them lustrous, and never wear your jewelry when bathing. Soap and water and cause a film to form on the metal of your diamond setting, which reduces the neat appearance or your diamond settings.

On a side note, remember that colored gemstones might require special care. Although, there are colored diamonds occurring in nature spontaneously as a result of impurities and flaws, there are many others colored artificially after enhancements and treatments.

There is a modern trend in diamond jewelry that applies a film coating to diamonds to make them fancy colored. This coat requires special care. Ask your jeweler for proper caring of your treated or enhanced diamond settings.

Wipe your diamond jewelry after wearing, just like you do with other fine jewelry settings. If your diamond looks slightly opaque, use a damp cloth gently rubbing its surface to recover its shining beauty.

Sometimes you would prefer to keep your diamonds stored with other fine gems. Clean your jewelry pieces before storage, keep them separated from each other, and take them out once a month for a routine luster cleaning.

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Even though this was a new era, many of the jewelry pieces seen during the Art Novueau and the Arts and Crafts era were still popular during the reign of King Edward VII.

The fine jewelry found during this era used gold, platinum, and diamonds. Platinum had been used previous but it had been very hard to work with to produce beautiful jewelry pieces. The advancements in manufacturing and technology brought platinum on the table as one of the most popular precious metals to use to create delicate and beautiful pieces. The overall style of jewelry still used fabrics of lace of silk, which brought the use of Millegrain and invisible setting and new stone cutting techniques. Millegrain would use the platinum or gold and secure the edge of a stone with ridges of tiny beads or grains surrounding the gem. Platinum and gold were both used to create what was called Knife-edges or openwork designs. This produced lightweight and inconspicuous settings for the precious gems.

Motifs were popular and the most common during the Edwardian Era were crescent moons, insects, serpents, and stars.

The most popular jewelry styles included the dog collar necklaces, bar brooches, bead and pearl sautoirs, spring bracelets, bangle bracelets, chain bracelets, jewelry sets with all clear or white stones.

The most common metals and stones used for jewelry during the Edwardian Era were amethysts, emeralds, opals, pearls, peridots, rubies, sapphires, platinum, silver, gold, and white gold after 1910.

Pearls were very popular but they were also very expensive and only the wealthy could afford to wear them. Queen Alexandra the wife of King Edward VII word seven rows of pearls each 24 inches to 30 inches long to her coronation. Along with the pearls, she wore rows of diamond chokers and several brooches, which covered her dress.

The most popular necklaces of the Edwardian Era include

Negligee necklaces, which were two pendants that hung at the different lengths from the chain.

The sautoir was a very long necklace that would hit just below the waistline. They were often created from beads and had tassels on the ends.

A lavaliere was a pendant necklace that was suspended from a small thin chain.

Brooches were very popular and they worn on various places over the body. There was no wrong way to wear a brooch during this era in time. During this time, it was not uncommon to find unique brooches with motifs depicting sports such as fox heads, golf clubs, horseshoes, and riding crops on many of the brooches.

Bracelets of all types were still very popular either worn singly or in multiples.

Other jewelry items just as important as the ones mentioned above include hatpins, stickpins, and watch fobs.

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This era was unlike any other that brought drastic change to America in the fashion industry. Women began wearing shorter length dresses, which were straight and created with thin fabrics with dropped waists. New hairstyles were created such as the bobbing of the hair, makeup was worn in public, and smoking by women was done in public. In addition, more skin was shown with low cut necklines, sleeveless blouses, see through areas on the clothing, and backless or practically backless dresses.

Because of this new trend, jewelry changed as well. Women desired all kinds of new trinkets such as jeweled cigarette cases, cigarette holders, jeweled handbags, and makeup cases. Platinum began being used more often and new stone cuts were available such as the emerald cuts, marquises, and pear shapes.

Since the lifestyle of the Art Deco era was more bold and daring so was the jewelry. Many of the jewelry items formed geometrical shapes, wild colors, and of course, the more jewelry worn the better.

Jewelry was created with all the precious stones and metal of the past however, new trends involved paste, coral, crystal, and onyx. In addition, many precious and non-precious gems or set side by side in the same jewelry piece.

Long strands of beads, pearls, and pendants, which hang all the way to the waist, were very popular especially among the “Flappers”.

The bangle bracelets were often not left to dangle but were pushed high up either on the arm and straight line bracelets were the most popular singly or in multiples.

Motifs seen during the Art Deco era included cubism, geometric designs, abstract designs, oriental art, Aztec art, Islamic designs, architectural designs, and florals.

The most common metals and stones during this time were diamonds, rubies, sapphires, rock crystals, carnelian, onyx, chrysoprase, marcasite, jade, ivory, amber, Mother of Pearl, Platinum, white and yellow gold.

Costume Jewelry was also very popular and was created with unique materials such as glass, horn, bone, paste, glass, chrome, synthetic gems, Tortoiseshell, and plastics.

Men were not left out during this era. The cufflinks, tie bars, and tiepins were often adorned with the same artistic style seen in the jewelry worn by women. The money clips were created often times with white gold with a simple engraving studded with a single cabochon cut gem. Along with this since smoking was an in thing, many men carried a cigar cutter or lighter in their pocket.

Rudolph Valentino, the famous film star of the time, set the standard for men when he popularized the wristwatch. These wristwatches were created from platinum, white gold or yellow gold and many were adorned with diamonds, triangular cut sapphires, and other cuts of precious stones. Pocket watches were soon to be a thing of the past.

All good things must come to an end and with the beginning of World War II so ended the Art Deco era.

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The Retro Era did combine some of the jewelry found in the Art Deco art. There were some characteristic that were similar only that instead of the angular sleek design of the Art Deco era this era showed more flowing designs and bolder sizes. The war effort took much of the platinum, gold, and silver. Shortages were also seen in pearls and gems due to embargoes, thus more semi precious and synthetic gems were used to create new jewelry styles.

Travel was restricted to European countries, but access to Mexico was easy. Many of the Mexican jewelry makers began to see a huge need in their styles. Mexican jewelry makers such as Taxco, Spratling, Aguilar, and Los Castillos were all the rave.

Elements that were used most often during the Retro Era include multi-colored gold, sculptural designs, 3-D designs, curving, flowing designs such as bows, ribbons, and scrolls, large cut semi precious stones, synthetic stones, pieces of gold, oversized scale, charms, charm bracelets, illusions settings, and patriotic motifs.

The fine jewelry makers of the Retro Era included Carier, Harry Winston, and Van Cleef and Arpels. Major costume jewelers were Coro Dior, Haskell Napier, and Trifari Boucher.

In most cases, jewelry of the Retro era was oversized bold pieces to draw attention. Charm bracelets became very popular with the event of the Duchess of Windsor wearing one on her wedding day. Her charm bracelet dangled with gem set crosses.

Brooches were created in patriotic styles using such forms as military insignia, eagles, and the US flag.

Instead of the long dangling earrings of the Art Deco era, the Retro Era saw earring close and clinging to the earlobe using with screw backs or clips.

Since the majority of European designers were out of reach to the US the popularity of costume jewelry was on rise. Plastic suitable for jewelry was used during the 1920’s and was still popular during the Retro Era mainly Bakelite and Lucite. This plastic would be molded or cast, and then top carved, under carved, painted, or then set with rhinestones. With mass production the use of paste was often used in the past, however, it was more expensive that using plastic which did replace paste during this time.

This was the beginning of costume jewelry, which is still very popular today. Even during times of war, women could wear beautiful jewelry without the cost of the expensive metals and precious stones, which were unavailable.

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Diamonds are around ten times harder than steel, twenty times the compressive strength of granite, and two times harder than tungsten carbide, but ten times more wear-resistant compared with this. The first time diamonds were considered as an everlasting gem was in India, where volcanoes and alluvial deposits propitiated the creation of crystalline carbon.

A Sanskrit text from 296 BC describes the procedure used mining diamonds and recording its hardness properties along with luster and dispersion. The quality of the gems associated diamonds with divinity and their use became a common decoration in Indian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian temples.

In India, the color and shape of diamonds distinguished the different castes and diamond ownership was restricted accordingly. Only kings were allowed to own diamonds of all colors. In Persia, Zoroastrians used diamond as a symbol to find the path to enlightenment, while in Greece, Alexander the Great was astonished at the Valley of Diamonds, where giant snakes with deadly gazes guarded the valley floor studded with diamonds.

Actually, the four Cs measures the indubitable duration of diamonds: cut, clarity, carat, and color. From the balance among these factors, a diamond cannot only last forever, but its face value increases.

Cut refers to the form that a diamond is given that requires a precise geometric proportion to keep its hardness and beauty. Skilled cuts create different facets that determine the diamond’s final shape and brilliance. Popular diamond cuts include round, oval, pear, heart, emerald, marquise, and princess form.

Inclusions or flaws in a diamond determine its purity and clarity. Diamonds are extracted from deep beneath the earth, as mineral carbon might it may come with traces of other elements trapped in them, which gives each gem a unique natural characteristic. Diamonds are catalogued into levels of clarity that range from flawless, moving down to VVS (Very Very Slight), VS (Very Slight) and SI (Slightly Included).

Carat is the weight that measures the mass of a diamond, equivalent to 200 milligrams per carat. Carats are often confused with dimensions of a diamond, which is inaccurate because dimensions are influenced directly by the cut of a diamond rather that its weight. This means that a small diamond in appearance can have more carats than another diamonds of bigger surface dimensions.

Color is resulted from the nature of the diamond. Colorlessness diamonds is a term commonly used to indicate transparent diamonds, which color scale is in the range between D to Z, that some people just refer as “white diamonds”, but going from icy white to light yellow.

However, depending on flaws and inclusions in carbon, diamonds can take another rare color that makes them even more expensive gems. The most sought-after diamonds are pink, followed by blue that sometimes are confused with the Blue opaque Zephyrs or Ceylon.

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