A New Chinese Revolution in Diamond Grading?
November 12, 20
I remember when Britain went decimal. I was only five when the old currency system - 12 pennies make a shilling, 20 shillings make a pound - was replaced in 1971. It was a big deal for the whole country, but for me and my classmates it was particularly significant. It meant our sums would be a lot easier. Doing calculations with a pound made up of 100 pennies is straightforward. Having to divide it by 240 is not. The system that was 1,000 years old, and far more complicated than it needed to be, thankfully gave way to something simple enough for a small child to understand.
The reason my thoughts turned to decimalization was that China's biggest retail jeweler this week announced plans to streamline another over-complicated system - diamond grading. Chow Tai Fook, which boasts almost 6,000 outlets will use artificial intelligence and blockchain technology to grade stones for the 4Cs. And the results will be presented to consumers using a numeric system. Out go the D-Z colors and the IF-I3 clarities, to be replaced by numbers. Nobody yet knows exactly how it'll work or how the new numbers will convert into the "old money" of established grading systems. I asked Chow Tai Fook to clarify, but they said it was too soon.Diam
Changing a currency is a big deal, and so is changing a grading system that dominates an industry. There was no standardized way of evaluating a diamond until about 80 years ago. Some suppliers and retailers used descriptors like "A," "AA" and "AAA" for color, with no agreement as to what they actually meant. Others employed terms like "Finest white +" or "Jager" for what we'd call a D. A "Fine white" or "Top Wessleton" approximated to a G, and a "Slightly tined white+" or "Top crystal" was an I. And to complicate matters further, some diamonds were described using everyday numbers (1,2,3), Roman numerals (I, II, III, IV) or a brief description of the gem quality (blue white, fine white).
The 4Cs which are now used across the world were the brainchild of Robert M. Shipley, founder of the GIA. He wanted to replace a baffling alphabet soup of vague terms with absolute values on which everyone agreed. The 4Cs started life in the 1940s, and were refined in 1953 with an objective D-Z color scale. The letter "D" was deliberately chosen for the top-grade stones to avoid confusion with the jumble of "A"s already being used. At the same time, a system for measuring a stone's clarity was also introduced - similar to the current GIA grades but minus the FL and I3 at either extreme, which were added in the 1970s. The majority of the world's diamonds are now GIA-graded, but there are labs that do things differently. The American Gem Society grades clarity on a scale of 0 to 10, CIBJO uses "Loupe clean" for FL and IF, combines some grades for smaller stones and uses the letter P instead of I at the bottom end of the scale.
So the diamond world more or less speaks the same language, but there are still a number of different accents dialects - variations from lab to lab. It may not be a problem for those in the trade, but it can still confuse the average consumer, who doesn't know a VS1 from a D. Chow Tai Fook wants to standardize both the way its stones are graded and the way those results are presented to customers. It's standardizing the grading by using an AI engine that's analyzed over 20 million diamond images, and which should, it says, all but eliminate human error or subjectivity. It's standardizing the presentation of results by adopting a consumer-friendly number system. So will it simplify matters - or will it complicate them by introducing another rival grading system. The company says in its press release that it is "revolutionising the current industry practice," and its group managing director Kent Wong, says: "We actively develop the AI technology in diamond grading arena and once again set a new standard for the industry."
We know where it will start - with smaller, own-brand T MARK stones (0.30-ct or below) in Hong Kong and Mainland China in the first half of 2021. That's what the press release says. But where will it end? It gives no clue. "Revolutionising" and "set a new standard for the industry" sound to me like something bigger than just the domestic market. But how will the rest of the diamond world respond to such innovation? Are we ready for China to change the world?