This year’s honorees include a Midwest retailer and two multi-store independents, one in New York and the other in New England.
Colored Diamonds, Both Mined and Lab-Grown, on Display in HK
At the Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair, Alrosa is showing the lots from its first color diamond auction, while another Russian company is presenting the world’s largest lab-grown yellow.

Hong Kong—Two colored diamonds said to be record holders are currently being showcased at the Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair.
At the September edition of the jewelry trade show, Alrosa is presenting an 11.06-carat fancy deep purple-pink cushion-cut diamond that it said is the largest diamond of its color ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America.
The purple-pink stone is one of 250 polished diamonds included in “True Colour,” Alrosa’s first auction of natural color polished diamonds. The sale is scheduled to take place online beginning Sept. 19 and results will be shared later this month.
The sale is part of a larger push by the company to become a major producer and supplier of the rare and increasingly expensive stones, with Deputy CEO Yury Okoemov calling this first auction a “stepping stone to our goal of taking [on] the colored diamond market.”
Alrosa plans to hold one to two colored diamond auctions a year going forward.
Other diamonds in the True Colour auction include an oval-shaped vivid orangey-yellow diamond that’s 15.11 carats and an 11.19-carat cushion-cut fancy vivid yellow.
Alrosa’s emphasis on color in Hong Kong is the latest in a series of moves by the miner to market its diamonds, both colored and colorless, more heavily.
Last year, the miner put up for auction five D color, VVS1 diamonds cleaved from a 179-carat rough.
Cutting the largest of the stones, a 51.38-carat diamond, was a first for the company and Alrosa’s Pavel Vinikhin said at the time that the cutting of the stone “gives a start to a new stage in the development of Alrosa’s cutting division that will actively develop polishing of extra-large and colored diamonds.”
The company also has designs on making a name for itself among U.S. consumers by highlighting the traceability of the diamonds it mines in Russia.

Alrosa is not the only Russia company that brought a record-setting stone to Hong Kong.
Diamond grower New Diamond Technology (NDT) said it is showcasing a 10.06-carat fancy intense yellow diamond grown using the high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) process. The SI clarity, octagonal step-cut stone is the only known fancy intense yellow lab-grown diamond of this size, NDT said.
Based in St. Petersburg, NDT has grown a number of large diamonds using the HPHT process, including the 10.08-carat fancy deep blue graded by the GIA in 2016 and brought to the September Hong Kong show that same year.
A video of the 10-carat yellow diamond as well as its grading report are both available online.
Rio Tinto, meanwhile, announced Thursday morning that it will have the 63 diamonds in its 2018 Argyle Pink Diamonds Tender in Hong Kong for viewing in conjunction with the show.

Among the stars of this year’s sale is the 3.14-carat emerald-cut “Argyle Alpha” (pictured above), which is graded as a fancy vivid purplish-pink.
The mining company also announced that it is bringing to Hong Kong a one-of-kind necklace set with a 5.25-carat Muzo emerald and two Argyle pink diamonds totaling 1.77 carats.
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