Interview: Robert Weldon

December 5, 2017
Sonia Esther Soltani

Why we
love them
Diamonds
help us celebrate loving and joyous occasions — betrothals, weddings,
anniversaries, births and birthdays. They can also mark a moment of
self-fulfillment and accomplishment. Once the purview of the ultra-wealthy or
royalty, diamonds have been democratized. Diamonds are unexpected gems. Though
it’s extremely rare, diamonds can be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, grey,
violet — with hundreds of variations in between.

A
history of symbolism
Diamonds
have been appreciated for thousands of years. They were believed to imbue the
wearer with the gems’ own characteristics. In India, people who wore diamonds
were assured of having a long life, physical endurance, and beauty. Perhaps
because of this, diamonds remain a symbol of love in many societies around the
world.

In a
class by themselves
Rarity,
hardness, brilliance and scintillation are all aspects that we appreciate in
diamonds…. Other gems are appreciated for different reasons, but principally
for their depth of color. For example, the rarity and beauty of rubies,
emeralds and sapphires are also remarkable attributes.

Iconic
examples
Different
people will have varying opinions, but I believe these five diamonds stand out
for their unique history, their iconic status, their singular size or color,
and for the people who loved them: The Great Mogul, Hope Diamond, Cullinan,
Dresden Green and Hancock Red.

Fascinating
facts
While
we know about the hardness — 10 on the Mohs hardness scale — many people do not
realize that diamonds are also great conductors of heat. This allows them to be
used in tooling, such as cutting, grinding and drilling, where extreme heat or
pressure will not cause them to disintegrate. Diamond powder is successfully
used to preform and polish other colored gemstones.

Personal
meaning

Aside
from their beauty and reflective characteristics, I am awed by a diamond’s
sense of permanence. Diamonds can be passed on to family members for
generations, and by this simple act, family history is conveyed with the glittering
gem. This is how people’s relationship with diamonds is constantly reaffirmed.

Who is
Robert Weldon?

Robert
Weldon started his career at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in the
1980s after receiving his Graduate Gemologist (GG) diploma. Currently director
of the GIA’s Richard T. Liddicoat Gemological Library and Information Center,
he was a senior editor at JCK magazine in the 1990s, where he wrote about
colored gemstones. He later joined Professional Jeweler (USA) magazine before returning
to the GIA in 2006. His photographs and articles have been featured in numerous
international gemological, jewelry and consumer publications.

gia.edu/library

By the book

A new monograph explores the wide world of diamonds

Written
by experts in their respective fields and lavishly illustrated, the monograph
Diamond focuses on the history, mineralogy, geology, localities, culture, uses
and aesthetics of diamonds. As one of the advisers to the project, Robert
Weldon “contributed his brilliant photographs to the book,” publisher Gloria
Staebler says.

Diamond is the 19th volume in
a mineralogical monograph series Staebler co-founded in 2001 to showcase
different mineral species or mineral-rich localities. Contributors to the book
include “diamond luminaries” such as
Nick Norman, Katherine Dunnell, John I. Koivula, Dr. Bram Janse, and Dr. James
Shigley.
“Since the beginning of time,
man has collected, traded, fashioned tools from, and adorned himself and his
environment with interesting and colorful stones of all kinds. But diamonds
hold a special power; maybe there is something in them that appeals to our
natural, simplest, purest, most beautiful selves,” Staebler muses. “A diamond
is as unique as a snowflake but is far more resolute.”

Photo: Alamy Stock Photo