Pear Engagement Rings
Like many other fancy cut diamond rings, pear cut diamond engagement rings are growing in favour as women seek to express their individuality and own a ring that stands out a little from the rest.
The pear cut is part of the modified brilliant category, which means it retains all the brilliant fire of the classic round cut diamonds but incorporates a more unusual shape. These popular diamond engagement rings continue to catch the attention of the jet-set with celebrities such as Anna Kournikova and Gong Li sporting pear shaped engagement rings.
This style of cutting originates back to the 1458 when Flemish polisher Lodewyk van Berquem of Belgium created the first pear shaped diamond. He was responsible for inventing a special diamond polishing wheel called a scaif and introducing absolute symmetry into the arrangement of the facets in order to get the best possible refraction of light out of the stone.
The pear cut is a mesh of the marquise and the brilliant round, which give it its distinctive tear shape and produces an extremely feminine and pretty look. Depending on taste, the shape may be plumper or more narrow. Ideally though to produce a pear-shaped diamond that is the most aesthetically pleasing, the length-to-width ratio should be between 1.50 and 1.70. Too short and wide or too long and narrow and the diamonds may radiate less sparkle or be hard to set.
Fancy cuts such as the pear allow the cutter to maximize the carat weight of a rough diamond. Compared to a brilliant cut, another 50 percent may be yielded from the rough stone if using the pear shape.
One of the most famous pear-shaped diamonds is the Taylor-Burton. The original rough diamond from South Africa weighed in at 240.80 carats but was cut to 69.42 carats to create the pear-shape. At the time Richard Burton paid $1,100,000 to buy this stone as an engagement gift for his beloved Elizabeth Taylor. After his death she sold it for a reported $2.8 million and gave the money to charity.
