Ronnie Mervis: Hi, I am Ronnie Mervis from Mervis Diamond Exporters. I would like to talk to you about Shapes of diamonds. When the diamonds come out of the ground they're in what we call, rough form, they look like pebbles and they've to be cleaned up, we've to cut off all the excess diamond which we don't need. We've to cut them into the beautiful shapes that are so popular today and so we're going to talk about a concept called shape.

Shape is very different from cut. Cut is something we'll talk about later and cut relates to the way that diamond exhibits light. What we're talking about right now is simply form. The most popular form is the ever-green round. Like the name implies it is round, it is the most efficient of all the diamonds in terms of treatment of light and it gives you the most brilliance for your money.

Most brides, most of the times, traditionally have gone with round. It'll always be popular because it's a beautiful shape but there are many others and I'd like to talk to you about them all.

This is a radiant. Beautiful shape, it's a member of the square family. It is 8 sided and it has 4 major sides, 2 longs, 2 shorts. And then the edges are clipped in each of the corners to give you that extra facet and so it has 8 sides. Very popular, the radiant cut stone, brides like them and you'll see a lot of them.

Here we have the Marquees, long, point in each side, French word, very popular shape, marquees. Here we're coming with an Asscher. The Asscher was designed about 70 or 80 years ago and it's not come back in full force. You can see it's a rectangular shape diamond with concentric faceting on the inside.

Here is another somewhat newbie, it's called the Cushion. Beautiful shape, it has an underbelly which makes it sometimes look a little smaller for its size than you would expect and that's because it was deep and puffy. It's the cushion! Next we've the pear, sometimes known as a teardrop. When it's a pendant it's usually worn point-up like a tear drop, on a finger it's point-down. Pear shape been around for as long as you can imagine and it'll be around for that long too.

Here we have a Princess. The princess is the sister of the radiant. The princess and the radiant which I showed you earlier on, are almost the same except the radiant has the corners cut-off and the princess doesn't. The princess is a pure four-sided stone. Now we're coming to cousin Emerald. This is not a green emerald as in emerald colored stones, but it's an emerald shaped diamond because it's cut in the same mode.

Now this stone is a little different from all of the other stones that I showed you uptill now for one very important reason. All of the other diamonds that I've showed you are cut to exhibit the maximum fire and flash and excitement that you can get out of the diamond. It's all about excitement.

The emerald cut is cut with a different concept in mind. The emerald cut is meant to present coolness, calmness, tranquility, almost like a frozen lake. So the emerald cut does a different job. It's the exact opposite of excitement, its calmness. Emerald cut for calmness.

Here we have an oval. It's a very intelligent stone because it's sort of a round stretched out. It's like a stretched limo. It's a stretched round. But when we stretch it you see it getting longer and therefore it appears to be bigger. But you don't see it getting slightly narrower. So you see the extra length, you don't see any of the slight narrowing and so what you get is a bigger look for the same money. And it's a beautiful, soft, feminine shaped stone.

Here we have a heart. We've got a beautiful little heart for the lovely cleavage, laser cut at the top. There is the heart for the lovers. And then we have the one that I brought at last because it's more of an accent stone than a main center stone. This is a Trilliant, it's a 3-sided triangular shaped diamond. So the obvious word trilliant. Trilliants are occasionally used as a center stone but mainly they are not. They're principally used as 2 side stones supporting the center.

Now I got to emphasize to you that no matter what shape you select, it's a matter of personal choice. No shape is really better or worse than any other. None is specifically recommended or unrecommended. Even though what I say might seem slightly contradictory because I told you previously that the round is the most brilliant of all, the others are almost as brilliant and for old technique and old practical purposes, nobody can see the difference. So shape is just a matter of personal choice.

But don't go away, please come back because we're going to be talking about something very important next and that is the four C's which is what you should really know in making a decision of how to buy a diamond.