Press Report

What has the sheen and
spherical form of a pearl
and the hardness of a diamond?

A Spanish-Austrian co-production
Round and Round

India, 1947: Claude Arpels, founder of the jewellery company Van Cleef & Arpels, pictures himself as a millionaire. Someone has offered him a chest full of pearls from one of the richest Indian Maharajas. When he opens the lid he is blinded by the pearls’ lustre – a scene just like in The Thousand and One Nights. But then he touches the pearls and they crumble to white powder. Without light, air and humidity pearls dry out, are dead like old bones.

Vienna, 1992: Ervin Knoepfler, diamond wholesaler, hears the story and since then has been haunted by an idea. He is convinced that there is a way to make spheres out of diamonds, diamond beads, that have the same soft lustre as the much-in-demand oyster product, but at the same time the hardness and resistance of a diamond. Of course there were other jewellers, dealers and technicians before him who had already tried different chemical and mechanical ways to make diamonds round. But they never got them really round. “The gems almost offer resistance to becoming perfectly spherical, it is against their law of nature,” Mr. Knoepfler says.

Barcelona, 1998: A Spanish engineer contacts Mr. Knoepfler. Just like him he has long been working on making diamonds round.

Unlike Mr. Knoepfler, he is more interested in technical challenges than a perfect sphere. The two men start co-operating on translating the idea into reality. Mr. Knoepfler provides appropriate material (diamonds in the colours pink, grey, yellow, brown, green and white), the Spaniard cuts it.

And what a surprise – the diamond is round! The Diapearl is born. Not even the diamond dealer knows how the engineer did it. The process is strictly confidential.

Vienna, 2000: Eugen Sartori & Gerhard Ruchswurm, jewellers, design a modern and simple Diapearl collection, playing with the effects of the material. The new product draws great interest from jewellers in Vienna, Italy, the United States, India, and even Japan.

Mr. Knoepfler is convinced that the Diapearl will soon become a worldwide "marchandise commune".

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