Is your birthstone diamond? Congratulations -- they are kind of the penultimate stone in our jewelry culture. They have captured such a huge part of our imaginations and an even larger part of our jewelry industry -- but is that because of how utterly beautiful and captivating they are? Or how rare?
It is not an accident that diamonds have dominated the “love jewelry” market for so many years. Although there’s evidence of diamonds being used as engagement rings since the middle ages, it was not done so as almost exclusively as it is today. In fact, the diamond industry was in decline in the mid 20th century when DeBeers coined the phrase “a diamond is forever”, which has to be one of the most successful advertising campaigns ever! They created the image of the diamond as the only stone of love. Could there be a movie marriage proposal without the opening of that creaky ring box? And what’s in there … it’s not tanzanite or an emerald, which are both rarer. Very successful use of the media by DeBeers.
I do not own a big diamond, and in all honesty, having grown up in the same western culture as most of you, I cannot say with a hundred percent honesty that I wouldn’t have swooned like a schoolgirl if anyone had ever offered me one! But when I move beyond the cultural norms and expectations and put on my rational head -- I have a lot of issues with diamonds. We all know the rough story of the African blood diamonds … how many thousands of lives have been lost for those one knee moments like in the diamond commercials? And … are they really that valuable … or are they simply inflated because they’re being artificially held back and “hoarded” to increase their rarity?
I am not “against” diamonds -- they are lovely, and there are so many beautiful jewelry designs created around those gorgeous stones. But I’d like us all to remember that we have choices when we design a ring -- we do not have to buy a diamond. And, while we rarely use diamonds at Linda Blackbourn Jewelry -- if we do, we use only ethically sourced diamonds or reclaimed stones.
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