The Diamond Commission of CIBJO, The World Jewellery Confederation, has released its annual report ahead of the 2010 CIBJO Congress, which is due to open in Munich, Germany, on February 19. In the report, the commission calls for a renewed effort to reach industry-wide agreement on nomenclature that accurately distinguishes between natural and synthetic diamonds.
In their report, Udi Sheintal and Jon Phillips, respectively the president and vice president of the Diamond Commission, note that they will be meeting with representatives of the International Diamond Council in London before the start of the CIBJO Congress, to investigate whether progress can be made in creating a joint set of nomenclature for natural and synthetic diamonds. “Hopefully all participating parties will concur that the lack of an agreed to nomenclature for diamonds – natural and synthetic – ultimately will affect consumer confidence negatively across the globe,” they wrote.
At the 2009 CIBJO Congress in Istanbul, the organisation decided not to change affect any change in the nomenclature permitted for gem-quality synthetic diamonds. This means that, at present, the only descriptor permitted by CIBJO is the adjective “synthetic,” not for any of the additional terms that were proposed, such as “man-made,” “laboratory-grown,” “laboratory created” or “[company name]- created.”
In a similar vein, the Diamond Commission report looks at the misrepresentation of diamonds in the mass media, and in particular in-flight magazines and sales catalogues. Surely, without a common, joint directive from the major umbrella organisations, such as the WFDB, IDMA, IDC and CIBJO, offenders “will continue to get away with arguments that the nomenclature is not clear-cut and therefore ineffective,” the report’s authors state.
The Diamond Commission report also looks at a study conducted by a task force created by the Accredited Gemmologists Association (AGA) into the impact of lighting on colour-grading colourless diamonds. The Task Force was established in response to allegations in recent years from gemmologists and appraisers that colourless diamonds exhibiting blue fluorescence were being over-graded by gem-testing laboratories.
