It is one of the smallest and most exclusive clubs in the world — one with no dues, no scheduled meetings, no fancy clubhouse, no fame or notoriety. Its members are super-secretive, determined to hide their amazing skills from the public eye, content to perform their daily acts of transforming raw material into works of art and beauty in private, behind closed doors in the towers of New York City’s Diamond District. They are the men — and, yes, all men — responsible for cutting the finest, largest and most beautiful diamonds, the diamonds that make headlines.
While most of the cutters choose to remain anonymous, the diamonds they cut are recognized by their first names, like movie stars. In an industry known for portable wealth, these diamonds represent the most concentrated version of that wealth, with a single stone weighing a few ounces often worth tens of millions of dollars.
The cutting industry in New York has shrunk over the years but, in the area of the biggest, most valuable diamonds, it remains vibrant. While the stones are owned by high-profile, big-name firms — Louis Glick, Steinmetz, Graff, William Goldberg — the responsibility for shaping them rests with the diamond cutters. All cutters are independent, paid by the stone, which is why a cutter may be working on different stones for more than one firm at the same time.
And although only one set of hands is at the cutting wheel at any given moment, the process is a collaboration every step of the way. Case in point: Isaac Wolf, a renowned cutter with 50 years of experience, is supervising the repair of a vivid blue diamond bought at the Geneva auctions this past November. He describes the cutting process as a collaboration of “the hands and the mind.”
Under the loupe, the stone looks as if the Cookie Monster has taken bites out of the girdle. Wolf says it is normal wear and tear for a diamond in a setting that has been worn for many years. He directs the young cutter, Usher Lenell, to make some small adjustments. Twenty minutes later, Lenell returns from the polishing room where he has worked on the diamond. The “bites” have been reduced dramatically, yet the diamond has lost just one point. The cutter is obviously — and justifiably — proud of his work. This is how all the master cutters start out, taking direction from a master. The young cutter, Wolf says out of his hearing, has “golden hands,” but not yet the knowledge to make the critical final cutting decisions.
Recutting or repairing polished stones is its own art. Diamantaires depend on their New York cutters not only to cut from rough, but also to improve stones bought at auction. One such example is the famed 35.56-carat Wittelsbach-Graff diamond, bought at auction for $24.3 million in December 2008. It lost some 5 carats in being recut in 2009, but gained a richer blue color.
Cutting from rough is a totally different process, Wolf says. “The cutter’s job is to bring out the hidden beauty. It’s like finding the soul of the diamond. You have to communicate with the diamond. The diamond tells me where to go.”
In the RoughIn order to fashion diamonds, there must be rough goods. Buying rough is the first step in the cutting process. Indeed, one renowned cutter, whose stones are famous but who prefers to stay out of the limelight, says that the finished stone is there “before you buy it.” The cutter is referring to the fact that the ability to look at a piece of rough and decide what it will yield is at the heart of cutting. Having been a cutter first helps any buyer decide how much to bid for a stone, or a packet of stones.
Harvey Lieberman, head of all manufacturing for Louis Glick and chief buyer of rough for the firm, was a cutter himself for many years, beginning his career working for William Goldberg, where his father had preceded him. At the same time, he began cutting for Louis Glick. Ultimately, Glick asked him to join the firm as a buyer of rough under Glick’s tutelage. “I made the round of tenders, and little by little, I learned the process of buying diamonds,” Lieberman recalls. “I like the colored better; it’s more of a science, the idea of bringing out the right kind of color.”
Unlike buying polished stones for recutting, buying rough, Lieberman says, is the “Wild West. It’s a speculative art. When you are at a tender, you have to make a quick decision. You have to go through hundreds of parcels; you have to be on top of your game.” Knowing the “genealogy of the rough,” he says, that is, where it was mined, “could help you in discerning where the color might go.” For fancy color diamonds, that can be the difference between just fancy or intense, between intense and vivid. In either case, the dollar difference can be tremendous. As an experienced cutter, Lieberman can make a quick, highly educated determination of the value of the rough he is buying, and can then communicate to the cutters what he expects to get from it.
Golden HandsOne cutter who fashions stones for Louis Glick is Wolf Gluck, whose “golden hands” were first nurtured at the firm of Martin Kirschenbaum. Until he began cutting, Gluck says, “I never looked at a diamond before.” Like all cutters, he learned by doing. “There is no school for cutting diamonds,” he remarks. Instead, he followed the direction of the Kirschenbaums, starting by practicing on other materials. It was recognized almost immediately that Gluck had a special touch and after just a week, he was given a real diamond to cut.
Now, with 15 years’ experience, Gluck has become the “go-to” person for briolettes, one of the most difficult shapes of all to fashion. “There is no table, no base to measure the faceting. You have to do it by eye,” he explains. Like all great cutters, Gluck sees the finished diamond that is hidden within the rough; he sees it in his mind. When fashioning a briolette, he says, “If it’s an important or complicated stone, I will think about it, I will dream about it. Sometimes I will dream solutions.” He fashioned a 15.01-carat briolette DIF that was sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction on May 2, 2005, for $934,832.
Decisions, DecisionsIt is also crucial for the owner of the stone to be close at hand during the cutting process, to approve the myriad choices that must be made. For example, says one cutter of extremely large and valuable stones, “The owner has to see how it is going. We keep the options open until the end. Should we make a 10-carat pear or a 7-carat round? You might go to the round; it’s worth more money.” The final decision may be made well along in the process. “If you don’t know what you are going to make — a heart or a pear — you have to be careful not to go either way until the person who owns the stone decides. While you are cutting it, you can see things you didn’t see right away.
“Sometimes you get a surprise, an inclusion you couldn’t see before,” the cutter continues. “You have to make a decision. You have to know the angles and you have to know the ‘twist.’ You have to adjust to get the best color. You can struggle with the color: ‘Why am I leaking color?’ You have to figure out how to bring up the color. The angles are where you bring life into the stone — life and light.”
Shape plays an even bigger role when it comes to cutting fancy color diamonds. “Stones leak color,” says Wolf, who has specialized in fancy colors since 1980. “Color reflects better when it is not symmetrical than when it is perfect. The more perfect you make a round stone, the more you leak color.” Wolf prefers to make a diamond just a tiny bit asymmetrical. “I believe some times in finishing a diamond a little ‘off’ if there is beauty in that.” With the blue stone under repair by Lenell, and with any fancy color diamond, Wolf notes, “When you change the angles, you change the color. As you get more reflection, the color gets darker.”
The cutter for one of the biggest diamond firms in New York, who also prefers to remain anonymous, describes the tension that is present all the while he is working on a major diamond: “I turned the stone and there was a deblet — a colorful gletz. The reflection of the stone at that one moment made it look as if half the stone was missing.” He knew in his mind that, of course, it wasn’t missing, but the reality didn’t change the sensation. “I had to stop working because I was so unnerved by it. I put the stone in the vault and went home for the day. You have to take the work to your heart. If you really don’t care, you won’t get as much out of the stone.”
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - May 2010. To subscribe click here.