The threshold. Off-white stones carry the faintest cast, visible against a truly colorless diamond and invisible on the hand. The report notices. The eye does not. Set in warm metal, almost nothing of the look is lost.

The most engineered cut in the trade, fifty-seven facets arranged to return as much light as the rough allows. Optimized over a century for maximum brilliance, which is why so much of what is sold today looks alike. We select for the ones that do not: proportions cut for the stone rather than for yield.