Gemstone Styles

Styles

There are many shapes, but only three cutting styles for gems: Brilliant, step, and mixed. A round brilliant has a round shape but a brilliant style. Faceters can combine these 3 styles to create many different gem designs.

Step cuts have rectangular facets. Emerald and baguette cuts are good examples. This style of cut can enhance the stone's color and really shows off its clarity. I find these useful because they can make light-colored gems appear darker.

Brilliant cuts have triangular and/or kite-shaped facets. Brilliant are named as such because this cut yields the most scintillation and brightness.

Mixed cuts are a combination of step and brilliant cuts. They showcase brilliant facets on the pavilion and step facets on the crown or vice versa. Though not very common, mixed cuts can also combine cabochon and faceting techniques.

Shapes

The common round, oval, square, rectangle, pear, marquis, heart and triangle shapes are available most everywhere. However, there are also, shield, half-moon, fancy, pentagonal, hexagonal, octagonal and higher-order polygonal cuts available. The reason you won't ofent see these shapes is because not enough gems are cut in this manner to justify mass-scale production of settings for them. Romano Gems can cut you any shape gem you want and set it.

Faceters can combine cutting styles above with these shapes. Some examples would include a square step cut with beveled corners (Asscher cut), a square modified brilliant (princess cut) or a square mixed cut (Barion cut). Each shape may have any number of facets and has its own character.

As a result, there are thousands of facet designs available today.

Barion Cut

This is a round brilliant pavilion on a fancy-shaped gem, usually having a step-cut crown or vice-versa. However, all barions have quarter moon facets located directly beneath the girdle. This cut can exhibit significant brilliance and can be almost any shape. These are deeper cuts, so allow cutters to maximize rough yield. The origin of the name of this cut is that the first barion was designed by BAsil Watermyer for his wife MaRION.

Rose Cut

The rose cut has a flat base and a triangular facets on a domed top. The resulting gems are usually dark. A vintage cut, it was originally designed to allow gemcutters to maximize yield from rough diamonds.

Ceylon Cut

The Ceylon cut has a step-cut pavilion and a brilliant-cut crown and is another attempt to maximize yield. However, a step-cut crown over a brilliant-cut pavilion is generally brighter.

Briolette Cut

Briolettes are faceted teardrops, often drilled to use as beads for pendants and earrings.

Emerald Cut

In the emerald cut, both the pavilion and the crown are step cut. This cut is always rectangular, although step-cut pavilion and crown combinations can be adapted to most any shape. This cut maximizes yield because beryl crystals are rectangular.

Radiant Cut

The radiant cut has a rectangular shape and triangular facets.

Scissor Cut

The facets of a scissor-cut gem look like the criss-crossed blades of scissors. It is a special type of step cut utilizing triangular, rather than rectangular, facets and is more reflective than a traditional emerald cut.

Cushion Cut

A square shape with gently rounded corners, making it look like the cushion of a sofa. Occasionally called a Pillow Cut.

Named Cuts

• In a checkerboard cut, a faceter cuts the gem with square facets, so its crown looks like a checkerboard.

• In Portuguese cuts, there are many tiers of facets, which creates more scintillation than almost any other cut.

• Zigzag cuts have isosceles-triangle-shaped facets which alternate direction on a domed crown creating beautiful flashes of color.

• Pinwheel cuts have a pinwheel design on the crown of the gem

• Propeller cuts look like propellers, usually in the pavilion

Cabochons

Gems cut into flat-bottomed domes are called cabochons . Generally used for opaque stones, this technique can be used to enhance optical effects, such as play of color in opal, cat's eye, and asterism. In faceted gems, these effects would be less visible.

Curved Facets

Flat facets aren't the only gem cutting technique available to today's lapidaries.

Fantasy Cuts

A fantasy cut uses large pavilion facets. Grooves and hemispherical divots are cut into these large facets and are then reflected throughout the pavilion. Very impressive effects and scintillation can be achieved with this technique and any shape can be used.

Concave Facets

This technique begins with a flat-faceted gem. Then, concave facets are cut and polished into the gem. These concave facets can be in the crown, pavilion or both. In the hands of a particularly skilled cutter, the curved facets can be used as lenses to focus the light that enters the stone, resulting in superbly bright scintillation.

As can be seen, there are many, certainly thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of potential designs in which a gem can be cut. Quite a difference from your big-box jewelry store with fewer than 10 gems species and round, oval, square, rectangle, pear, marquis, heart and triangle cut stones in their display cases!

Custom cuts are available at Romano Gems!