Shen London
The Story Of Diamonds
Born Over 50 Million Years Ago
From the Greeks who found the hardness of this natural element impossible to cut, naming it ‘adamas’ or ‘unconquerable’ to the ancient Arthsastra manuscript which has the first recorded writing about diamonds and the Romans who thought diamonds represented the tears of their many Gods.
A diamond is one of the oldest pieces of nature found on our planet and comes to you at the end of an extraordinary voyage. The diamonds carefully hand-selected for Shen.London’s designs were almost certainly born over 50 million years ago. 
Creating Diamonds
Diamonds were created deep within planet Earth where Carbon was subjected to high temperatures and pressures forming into perfect diamond crystals. Some diamonds were carried to the surface by volcanic eruptions. They travelled down mountains in streams until they reached the riverbeds at the bottom where humans discovered their natural beauty millions of years later.
Each a tiny miracle
Once a diamond has been recovered, the rough stones are cut by a Diamond Lapidary to accentuate each diamonds brilliance and allow the sparkle and dispersion to escape from the stone.
Diamond is the hardest natural substance known to man, it can only be cut using another diamond. The Lapidary will hand cut each diamond and they know that every diamond has four directions of ‘weakness’ called cleavage planes. They will saw a notch into the diamond crystal using another diamond and then, with a small chisel, knock the diamond and it will spilt leaving two relatively flat surfaces. Once they have a good rough shape of the diamond the Lapidary will now use their expertise to cut up to 58 flat surfaces, called facets, onto a Round Brilliant cut diamond. These diamonds may be smaller than 1mm round.
Each diamond used by Shen London is cut specifically for our jewellery from the rough material, ensuring they are only the very best.