A Few of my Favourite Cuts

Asahi - Rising Sun.

Frosted facets create the cross on the table.

Golden Poppy - unusual being 5-sided.

N^o5 :: Iron Cross - with a brilliant pavilion. Facet tiers A & C are left frosted.

Design by Ian Robinson, 41 facets.

Having cut a number of cross designs I was looking for one that was simple and bold where the design could be clearly seen without magnification. This seems to work well and has attracted a lot of interest.

The Iron Cross has been a German military award from 1877 to the present and its design may be traced back to the cross pattée of the 11^th century Teutonic Knights of Jerusalem and earlier.

Lightbringer .. simple and stylish 'twisted-triangle'.

Worked well for me in mid-coloured stones such as padparascha sapphire. I have cut in black spinel as well. Cool and gothy init?

The star is usually left frosted. This has been a popular cut especially in blue sapphire. Unfortunatly rather time-consuming to cut well. For smaller stones the centres of the triangles (c) can be omitted.

Rather popular. Like many frosted designs tricky to do well, good in larger stones as a spectacular centrepiece.

Apparently inspired by a camera frame. Works unusually well.

Rather spectacular, especially in lighter stones.

There are good reasons why the S.R.B. is so popular. Spectacular light return, lower wastage of natural rough and easy to set. Despite the name there are many varients.

The frosted facets form the Hagal Rune. This is the original Scandanavian - Younger Futhark glyph with the longer vertical lines see also Hagal Rune from Armanen Futharkh script of Guido von List.

Hanami (花見, "flower viewing") is the Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the transient beauty of flowers Another interesting design by Marco Voltolini. 'Hanami' is modelled on a cherry blossom. A set of tiers is left frosted with the 'petals' polished.

A bright sparkly flower cut.

Another flower cut.

Tricky and time-consuming to cut, when I get it right one sees a pseudo 3d pattern of cubes appearing and disappearing.

A striking trillion cut, easier to set with cut corners.

An interesting variant on the ‘square barion’ concept with the table rotated by 45 degrees. This has been used in cutting competitions in the UK and US. The pavilion is essentially brilliant cut giving a very bright sparkly appearance with plenty of dispersion.

Simple & Stunning.

Clean .. simple .. stunning..

An interesting ‘modern’ hexagon. Restrained in that it does not have an excess of facets resulting in a design that shows off the geometry of the cut. Interestingly there are two varients, left and right handed which works nicely with matched stones.

The brightness, most sparkly trillion cut I know.

A very nice 'opposed bar' cut. In direct light square pixels flash as the stone is moved leading to an unusually dynamic and eyecatching effect. Surprisingly works even better in dark stones such as deep blue sapphire.

A very bright pear by the noted American designer/cutter Jeff Graham.

Very geometric, clean and modern.