5 Takeaways on the Lab-Grown Diamond Market

(The National Jeweler) - A few weeks ago in New York, I had the opportunity to attend a day-long forum on lab-grown, or synthetic, diamonds organized by the U.S. Jewelry Council. The purpose of the forum was not for the mined diamond industry to align itself against the diamond growers; in fact, it’s worth pointing out here that there are well-known diamond companies/dealers that have their hands in both. As just one example, Royal Asscher--a 162-year-old family business that invented the cut that still bears its name and cleaved what remains the largest diamond ever mined, the Cullinan--had a line of colored lab-grown diamond jewelry called Rebel Chique and now is part-owner of a company selling lab-grown diamonds on Amazon. Instead, the forum was put together to discuss the issue of undisclosed lab-grown diamonds, those stones that slip into the supply pipeline undetected. Here’s (some of) what I learned.