From Deseret News archives:
EightStar gems twinkle brighter?
Cutters tout their method, but not everyone agrees
In her Sonoma County workshop, the bright-eyed 43-year-old sat serenely behind her scaife, a diamond-cutting wheel that looks like a record turntable, albeit one that spins at 3,800 rpm. Coated with diamond dust and olive oil, it abrades the side of a diamond to create a facet.
"You have to be with the diamond all the time," von Sternberg said. "I think of it as sculpting because I'm making a work of art. Every diamond is different, so it doesn't get boring."
Alison and her husband, Richard von Sternberg, 58, say they have perfected a method of cutting that makes a diamond leap incandescently to life, shot through with brilliance (white light) and fire (colored light). Under a special viewing mechanism called a Firescope, it shows a distinctive eight-spoke pattern.
The couple named their cut and their company EightStar. They say their techniques could revolutionize diamonds — but it's not clear whether the diamond industry will receive them with open arms or a cold shoulder.
Last year, a Swiss diamond enthusiast who has a 25 percent stake in the company bought a spectacular, $2.3 million diamond to be recut to EightStar proportions. An EightStar cutter reduced it from 14.89 carats to 13.42, lopping off a quarter-million dollars' worth of weight.
"Every little bit of weight that comes off makes people sick to their stomach," Richard said. "People who heard we were going to do this thought we were nuts." But the new cut made the light dance and the colors vibrate inside, he said.
EightStar turns out about 2,000 diamonds a year, a 10th of the volume of bigger companies.
Richard von Sternberg said annual sales are in the millions of dollars. He declined to specify the profit margin, although he said it's low because the cutting process is so labor intensive.
The von Sternbergs were dealers of colored gemstones until a theft wiped out their inventory. They stumbled into EightStar when an acquaintance opened a diamond-cutting factory in Sonoma County using techniques that a Japanese expert had spent years perfecting. They bought the company in 1991 for less than $1 million when their acquaintance decided it was too overwhelming an enterprise for him.
EightStar cutters spend an average of 32 hours to cut a single diamond. Cutting factories in Israel and India crank diamonds out like widgets at the rate of one every 45 minutes.
EightStar diamonds cost about 40 percent more than those mass-produced gems, but some jewelers say they're worth it.
