Diamonds & Engagement Rings News

According to news reports, Uma Thurman, the charismatic actress and Arpad “Arki” Busson, London financier are engaged. If the actress goes through with the plan and marries Busson, this will be Thurman’s third wedding.

Thurman has been previously married to Ethan Hawke, and had two children with him. The marriage ended in a divorce in 2003. Uma was also married to the actor, Gary Oldman. Busson had been married as well with the supermodel Elle Macpherson and had two sons with her. Their relationship had ended in 2005.

Stephen Huvane, Uma Thurman’s representative confirmed the rumors of her engagement saying, “I can confirm she is engaged.”

                  

The couple began dating last summer and had a growing relationship  in a short period of time. Businessman Busson is the founder and chairman of EIM Group, which is a fund management business based in London.

Busson proposed to Thurman with a diamond ring so big, “she can’t fit it through the sleeve of her coat,” New York Daily News quoted a friend of Thurman’s.

Earlier in the month, Jack Jordan, 34, had been put on probation in the U.S. for stalking Uma Thurman and harassing her children for the past two years.

 Thirty eight year old, Uma Thurman acted in several different movies ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to action thrillers and science fiction. Thurman is known best for her acting in “Pulp Fiction,” “Kill Bill” and “The Producers.”¼/p>

It seems as if engagement rings have become the new fashion for the celebrity world. It has turned into a Hollywood trend now for young celebrities, such as Eva Longoria Parker, Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson, Jessica Alba, Ellen Pompeo and Katherine Heigl, to find love. They have also very much fallen in love with their engagement ring.

The style and type of engagement ring a woman chooses significantly defines her. Jewelry experts describe an engagement ring as individual as the person who wears it. There are three most popular engagement rings worn by celebrities and each has their own definition as to what the style means.

Fancy-shaped diamonds are emerald, marquis, oval, pear and cushion shaped diamonds. Although round diamonds are undeniably the most acknowledged shape for engagement rings, fancy shaped diamonds have become an exception to some celebrities defining them as fashion forward people with distinctive style. Ellen Pompeo (emerald), Victoria Bekham ((marquis), Katherine Heigl (pear) and Eva Longoria Parker (emerald), are a number of celebrities with remarkably shaped engagement rings.

A vintage styled engagement ring is another uniquely designed ring, which is romantically and lavishly crafted. This particular design is definitely exclusive but not too hard to find. Cool metals such as palladium, platinum and white gold structure beautiful vintage styles. Vintage inspired rings describe a person as passionate, optimistic and hopelessly romantic. Such celebrities include Kate Walsh, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Christina Aguilera.

Brilliant colored diamonds make engagement rings appear more vibrant and vivid, identifying with the person’s happy and colorful time of getting engaged. Now diamonds come in almost every possible color, but are much more rare making them also much more expensive. However, small stones could also be designed to appear much larger and be catchier to the eye. Women with brilliant colored engagement rings want to attract attention are lively, energetic and pine for luxury. Heidi Klum, Brooke Mueller, and Rebecca Romijn definitely fall under this category, all having yellow engagement rings.

Engagement rings and wedding bands stand out as reminders of lasting love and devotion of a husband and wife. Some even get passed down through generations making the memory stronger and continuous.

Drinking Champagne has just become more stylish and luxurious with diamond-encrusted glasses worth close to half a million dollars. An Australian Jeweler has exposed the most expensive champagne glasses, embellished with 1,700 white and pink diamonds worth $400,000.

John Calleija, designer of the two exquisite diamonds stated that even after having five jewelers working on the two glasses, it took more than three months to individually carve out each glass from 8kg blocks of quartz rock crystal.

Each glass stands 15cm tall, weighing 250 grams. Together, the crystal glasses are covered with 15 carats of white diamonds and another six carats of pink rare diamonds. The glasses are completed with platinum 18-carat white and rose gold.

                     

Mr. Calleija was said to be experimenting with his designs when he came up with the brilliant idea, which easily led to the idea of diamond-encrusted chopsticks as well.

He mentioned to AAP, “I just wanted to get into a different are of objects, like luxury goods. I drew a whole series of diamond-encrusted letter openers, salt and pepper shakers, scissors, everything, even chopsticks… But I drew the glasses and there was just something about them.”

At first the designs seemed to be only a foreign dream, but after showing them to one of his long-term clients, the client instantly ordered the expensive work of art custom-made.

Even after Calleija warned his client of the cost it would be, the client insistently said he’d like to put his hand up for them and decided he would take them.

The buyer, who was a Melbourne businessman said that he would cherish these glasses and promised to turn them into family heirlooms.

These beautifully delicate glasses were said to be the pride and joy of Mr. Calleija and his group. He says, “Tears were coming from their eyes because they know how much this has been a labour of love.”  Â

The world of engagement rings has made a big turn in style. While rock sizes increase, engagement bands holding the diamonds, shrink. All that’s left is skinny loops of metal holding up huge stones.

The owner of David K. Jewelers from Los Angeles, states that in the last three years there has been a 60% increase of customer requests for bigger stones, such as three-carat diamonds. These stones are being paired on a platinum setting with hair-splitting widths of two millimeters compared to three-ten millimeters in the past.

David Gaudjeian from David K. Jewelers says, “The thicker, gaudier rings are out….Customers really want to show off the diamond and not cover up the finger.”

Blue Nile, the famous online jeweler claims that the four-and-six-prong platinum setting can hold a stone as big as twenty carats for their engagement rings. their engagement bands are made in such a way, which create an illusion of a small diamond having a very large appearance.

The average cost of an engagement ring nowadays is $5,400. What customers definitely pay for is the diamond, but most of the work is actually the setting and fitting of the diamond into the shank. having side stones set into a ring just adds to the difficult work, making it more complicated to set.

However, this delicate ornament does not fit for every bride-to-be. These types of jewelry tend to bend easily or even ruin the diamonds sometimes. having to fix the ring or diamond ends up costing customers a good fortune. Gaudjeian warns women that if they go to the gym and lift weights or are in active sports, such jewelry should not be worn.

Scintillating Jewels once belonging to Christina Onassis, a Greek shipping inheritor sells for a good $14 million at an auction, Christie’s said today.

The most astounding of the 44 jewels that belonged to Christina Onassis was a pear-shaped 38-carat diamond on a diamond pendant necklace. This glitzy piece of art, aside from the rest of her jewels, sold for $7.5 million.

               

Christina Onassis had been married and divorced four times, throughout her lifetime. She was born in New York to the shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, and took over his empire once he passed away.

Christina died in 1988, at age 37 from fluid in her lungs, a daughter named Athina, behind.

Christina’s collection of jewels was part of a larger jewelry auction, which consisted of 230 rings, necklaces, bracelets, single stones, pearls, and other pieces from jewelers such as Cartier. The jewelry in total brought in a sum of $31 million. The auction had reached a record in any jewelry auction in Britain.

Diamond Prices have gone up yet again, pitching 12.3% in May. According to the IDEX Polished Diamond Price Index, the prices for the month of May have significantly exceeded prior months.

Large sized diamonds such as, three, four, or five carat stones have gone up to 47%, 64%, and 77%, topping the passed year by a great amount.

After having a stable market for about two months, prices soared on May 23rd and then again on may 27th.

There must be a major cause to such a great change to diamond prices and values. The U.S. own about half of the diamond jewelry produced in the entire world. When it happened to be that in the past the U.S. economy would slow down then the diamond demand also lessened making diamond prices diminish. This time the situation differs enormously. While the demand for diamonds was not as strong in the U.S. recently, the markets in all other countries around the world have been growing tremendously, demanding better quality and more diamond jewelry. At the same time, keeping diamond prices elevated.

Tiffany & Company is a perfect example of the drift of international markets. In the U.S. the sales of the company were doing poorly, while in all other countries, except for Japan, the demand for diamonds at Tiffany was very strong. The recent condition of the U.S. economy can be viewed as healthy for the industry rather than comparing it to global markets and viewing it poorly.   Â

A $5 million lawsuit was filed against Knoxville-based Jewelry Television by a Californian woman who claims that the network intentionally sold treated gemstones as if they were “extremely rare” and “all natural.”

Marliese Weed, who says that the shopping network engaged in “unfair and deceptive conduct”, filed the lawsuit on May 23rd. She believes it all started on January 2003 when Jewelry Television sold a gem identified as andesine-labradorite as being “all natural, among the most rare stones on the face of the Earth and the most collectible gemstone on the planet.” Weed had purchased more than$4,000 worth of stones only to realize that they were nothing more than what she calls, “mass-produced result of chemical face-lifts in gemological beauty parlors.” she says that the gems were bought from Mongolia, Mexico, and China for just pennies per carat and were sold for bizarre prices.

Other than weed, there were other complaints about the gemstones that were bought from Jewelry Television. Jewelry Television was disappointed at the customer and said that the woman filed a lawsuit without first taking advantage of their liberal return policies.

Jewelry Television had stated that the laboratories from which they bought their stones, had consistently confirmed that the gems were natural and untreated and this is what they relied on.

The company did admit to an incident that happened in January where gemstones were reported as being treated and that JTV told the customer about it right away. JTV states that they continuously told their customers about the stones that were treated as soon as they were discovered. JTV believes that the reasons the lawsuits were put against them were false and that they will be justified for it.

Jewelry Television was planning on building a new headquarter to add to their line, but this is now being put on hold due to their decline in business. Â

On Wednesday, at the spring auction of Christie’s in Hong Kong, a 101.27-carat colorless diamond was sold for 48.49 million Hong Kong dollars (6.22 million U.S. dollars).

The 101.27-carat stone is an F color, internally flawless VVS1 and is the largest stone of such a king ever sold at an auction in Asia. Nor has there been such a stone to appear on the HK auction in 18 years.

The chairman of jewelry at Christie’s, Francios Curiel, mentioned that the diamond was put on offer in Hong Kong because the auction house believed that Asia was becoming a lively market.

Christie said that there were eight other items which were priced well over two million U.S. dollars and this is something that is not often seen at the companies jewels auctions. Included was a 10.63-carat green diamond which reached a value of 27.21 million HK dollars, which is equal to 3.49 million U.S. dollars.

Vickie Sek, a Christie’s jewelry expert in Asia said, “It is the most successful jewel auctions we have ever had.”

Most of the people who bought these expensive stones were private collectors from Asia.

 Rihanna and Chris Brown buy each other pricey diamond necklaces worth $200,000. Although the two of them have been caught several times kissing, they remain hesitant about letting the public in on their romance.

The necklaces were bought at Jason Arasheben’s exclusive jewelry store in Beverly Hills. Of course the money to buy the necklaces was not a problem for the two of them.

Arasheben reports to the News of the World that while Chris was getting Rihanna a necklace with a heart theme, Rihanna got Chris a nice size diamond encrusted cross.

                       

It seems like Rihanna and Chris Brown have made it public enough to know there is something stirring between the two. Maybe its about time they announce their romantic involvement already?¼/p>

Despite for the decline in the overall market, prices for polished diamonds keep increasing. It is evident that the result of this is due to better quality goods for SI1 clarity and over.

IDEX Online Price Index reports that the average requested prices for diamonds have been rising for a few months already. March was the first month the prices had actually been soaring, leading Rapaport to raise the price list to 20% in some cases.

       

During a public statement last week, Rapaport mentioned that the “significantly higher prices…do not reflect any sudden change in diamond prices but rather adjustments made to reflect the level of premiums in the trading market.”

Several diamond traders pointed out that the sudden raise in prices brought some shock and instability to the market.  Â