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In-Depth
Behind The Cutting Wheel
A look behind the scenes at four people who have devoted their lives to the art and craft of cutting diamonds.
By Lara Ewen
YOU MUST HAVE JAVASCRIPT ENABLED TO VIEW THE SLIDESHOW
Name: Barry Ian RogoffCompany: Barry I. Rogoff Diamond Cutters, Inc., Los Angeles, CaliforniaYears in business: 33 years plusWebsite: wecutdiamonds.com
Barry Ian Rogoff has been cutting diamonds practically his whole life. He began in the trade at only 16 years old, as an apprentice for Gustav Katz Diamond Cutting Works in Johannesburg, South Africa, and in 1976, immigrated to the U.S. Rogoff initially worked for Baumgold Brothers in New York, but soon moved to Los Angeles to run a small factory there with Alan Blom. It’s there that he met Yakov Kleyman, and after graduating from a Gemological Institute of America (GIA) diamond course, the two opened their own company. Then Rogoff’s business took an unexpected turn. “Ironically, the springboard for our success was not related to cutting rough diamonds, but rather the complete lack of them,” says Rogoff. “We accidentally found our niche, which resulted in repairing and recutting diamonds.” Rogoff says recutting and repairing is now his passion.“It could be as simple as faceting a girdle, removing a small chip on the point of a pear brilliant, or converting a marquise into an oval cut,” he says. “And I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have had to fully recut or repair a princess cut. I love restoring old diamonds that were first cut hundreds of years ago. I can study those stones for hours, appreciating what those previous diamond cutters, with rudimentary knowledge and tools, had to go through to cut those stones. It’s remarkable to me how much character and interest old diamonds have.” Rogoff, who also does GIA certificate work, says that one of his favorite jobs came from that avenue. “One day I got a call from Lou Cvelbar, a gemologist at Norman Silverman Diamonds,” he says. “He wanted me to look at one of the nicest stones he’d seen in a long time.” Rogoff says the stone, a 27.92-carat emerald cut that had been sent to the GIA for an upgraded report, had been purchased in a ring with the original report reading D, IF, with Excellent polish and Excellent symmetry. “Because the stone came out of a mounting and had been worn, the lab found some abrasions, small chips and bruises,” he says. “The GIA graded the stone D, VVS2, Potential. My job was to recut the stone, bringing it back to IF while maintaining the Excellent polish and symmetry.” Rogoff says it took him a week. Then Cvelbar asked him to take the stone to Flawless. “After much back and forth with the lab, I finally got a 27.42-carat D, Flawless Excellent Excellent,” he says. “If you do a search for GIA report 11211518, you’ll see a copy of the certificate.” Yet as much as he’s enjoyed his work, Rogoff has begun questioning why someone would want to enter the profession today. He says that inconsistent lab grading had made the hard work of cutting feel thankless. “I remember when the client appreciated the stone first, before looking at the certificate,” he says. “To me, it’s sad, because it used to be fun, exciting and interesting. Today, cutting diamonds has become an exercise in frustration.”Name: Sheila Zargari GuritzCompany: Zargari Diamonds, San Francisco, CaliforniaYears in business: 20 years plus Website: zargaridiamonds.com
Sheila Zargari Guritz is an anomaly in the diamond-cutting business and she knows it. “I feel like the lone wolf,” she says. “This is a very masculine industry. And the funny thing is, when I started in the industry in the 1990s, I was trained by a woman who was much older than me at the time.” Guritz began her cutting career at a small California diamond company, eventually becoming a trainer there before taking a ten-year career hiatus to raise her children. When she recently re-entered the industry and founded her own San Francisco–based company, Zargari Diamonds, she discovered that returning was more complicated than she had anticipated. “Getting tools and things of that nature was difficult,” she says. “The diamond cutters I know, who are men, were not very forthcoming about helping me. I think it’s partly because I am a woman. They have a protective shield over their cutting business.” The struggles Guritz has faced in order to be accepted in the industry have helped define her. “I think there’s a mind-set that if you didn’t learn cutting as a child, sitting with your father and grandfather, then you can’t possibly become a cutter,” she says. “I have obviously debunked that. And I want to bring this art back to America. We can’t be sending all this work overseas, because then our art will die.” She would also like to see more women cutting. “I’d love to train as many women as are interested,” she says. “That would be a real boost to our industry and dispel the myth that only men can do this.” Although her shop is a one-person operation right now, she plans to train two students over the summer and hopes to make Zargari Diamonds widely available in the upcoming year. In the meantime, she enjoys educating the public about her work. “My company is unique in the sense that I offer field trips to educators to allow their students to come learn and experience hands-on diamond cutting,” she says. “I hope to inspire the next generation to feel the passion behind this dying art.” Guritz also lets individuals personally have a hand in cutting a diamond, either for themselves or for a loved one. “How often can an individual say that they actually cut their own diamond?” she asks. “Of course, they don’t usually cut the whole diamond, but at least they get their hands dirty.” When it comes to cutting diamonds for loved ones, she has a particular insight. “The most meaningful stone I’ve cut is one that I cut for my husband,” she says. “I wanted to surprise him for our anniversary.” Guritz says that while the stone isn’t large, it carries a lot of meaning. “It’s a high performance round brilliant, about 1/3 carat,” she says. “I don’t need his diamond to be bigger than mine, and I knew that he would have it for the rest of his life, so it had to be perfect.”Name: Bernard (Barney) Schumacher Company: Schumacher Diamond Cutters Inc., Bismarck, North DakotaYears in business: Started cutting in 1972 and incorporated in 1984. Cutting for 45 years.Website: schumacherdiamond.comBarney Schumacher wasn’t originally convinced, at the age of 17, that he wanted to be a diamond cutter. “My father was a watchmaker and he was into jewelry manufacturing,” says Schumacher. “And I wasn’t ready to go to college. I think I wanted to go to the Yukon or something crazy like that. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go into jewelry and diamonds.” But he did. After two years at a diamond-cutting school run by Leonard Ludel, a retired cutter who had worked in New York and Los Angeles, he and his friend Nizam Peters, now director of the American Institute of Diamond Cutting based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, traveled to Guyana to learn how the rough diamond business worked. Later, Schumacher traveled to Sierra Leone, Liberia and South America in the 1970s, returning to Bismarck, North Dakota, after several years. It’s then that he began working in his father’s business, doing recuts and tool and die work. In the mid-1980s, Schumacher started his own business, and these days, he focuses on recutting, repair and rough for both natural and lab-grown diamonds. “We do every step of the manufacturing process in-house,” he says. “Because we’re located outside of the normal diamond-cutting centers, we built our business by taking the most difficult jobs that others declined to take. I have a tool and die background, too, so if special tooling is necessary to fix a piece for cutting, we’re able to design and create the tool in-house. And we’re totally self-sustaining. We repair our own stuff, and we resurface our own wheels, and we even do that for people in New York, because they don’t have the equipment. We do it all here, but it’s still a small business with only six cutters.” His most memorable stone? “I would have to say it was a 23-carat rough that came out of Sierra Leone, before the blood diamond days,” he says. “In the rough, it looked like it was an I-J color, and had a few purity problems. As we took the skin off, it became more white and clean. It finished as a 10-carat-plus E color, IF clarity pear shape probably worth $1 million or more today.” Schumacher says his biggest challenge these days is simply keeping people happy. “The jewelry business is going through some difficult changes, and this is a stressful time for our industry, both on the wholesale and retail sides,” he says. “Most people have no idea how many steps, training, dedication of our cutters and the amount of investment in equipment it takes to recut a diamond.” Still, he has few regrets. “Forty-five years is a lifetime dedicated to providing a service to our industry,” says Schumacher. “And I was so lucky to be able to work with great local people. I don’t think what we did here in North Dakota could ever have been done in another time or area of this country. There were local young men that were moving off the farm that knew how to work hard. All I had to do was teach them how to cut.”
Name: William LopezCompany: Independent contractor in New York City; has worked for William Goldberg for 25 years, in addition to a select number of other manufacturers and contractors. Years in business: 46 yearsWebsite: n/aFor William Lopez, diamond cutting is a family business. His father, also a diamond cutter, immigrated to New York City from Puerto Rico in 1947. Lopez and his brother were trained to cut diamonds by a man named Antonio Borrero, who was a friend of his father’s. But both brothers were not equally adept. “Before I came to work in the diamond business, my older brother came to learn,” says Lopez. “But he wasn’t very good at it. Borrero was leery about teaching me, because my brother was so bad.” Fortunately, Lopez took to the craft quickly and ended up working with Borrero for seven years. “He had his own shop,” says Lopez. “In 1970, it was unusual for a Puerto Rican diamond cutter to have his own shop. I don’t know that there was another one like him.” Around the time that Borrero decided to close his shop, Lopez went to work for Henry Grossbard, the creator of the radiant cut. After that, he spent several years working for Max Roisen, and later Jack Roisen. Subsequently, he worked with Robert Burwall, and then Abe Blick, in Burwall’s shop. He eventually came to work for William Goldberg, who patented the Ashoka cut. “I plan to retire from here,” says Lopez. “I say that no matter how slow it is, they have to keep me here until I’m ready to retire.” Over the course of his career, there are two stones that Lopez is particularly proud of. One is a South African 110-carat emerald cut, vivid yellow VS2 that was 141 carats in the rough. The other is a stone he cut for his son. “My son wanted an Ashoka when he got engaged,” says Lopez. “He wanted something that his father had helped develop. So I cut the 1.55-carat stone he gave the woman who is now his wife, and now it’s a family heirloom. Later on, they’ll say, my grandfather or even my great-grandfather cut this stone.” While Lopez loves his work, he also understands the challenges of the industry. He says the number of cutters in New York City has dwindled from over 2,500 to only 100 or 200, and he’s frustrated by grading standards. “I wish GIA people would all have to spend at least a month on the bench,” he says. “I think they’ve gone overboard on standards and it’s hurting the industry. I think sometimes people don’t appreciate the effort and the time and the skill that it takes to do what we do.” But Lopez maintains a sense of humor about his work. “What’s the saying?” he says. “The difficult, I can do right away. The impossible, it will take me a little time. That’s how I feel. But I’ve had a good life in the diamond industry and I can’t complain.”
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - May 2017. To subscribe click here.
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