People shaped and polished stones for thousands of years before anyone cut a facet. The earliest gems were drilled beads and rounded pebbles. Later came engraved seals, polished domed cabochons and carved cameos. Faceting, with flat polished faces set at planned angles, took hold in Europe and India only in the late Middle Ages, and the precise geometric cuts of today are largely a product of the last two centuries.
The first beads
Shell beads drilled for stringing go back well over 70,000 years, as covered on the prehistoric jewelry page. Stone beads came later. By the Neolithic, people were grinding beads from soft stones and then from harder ones such as carnelian, agate and jasper.
The bead makers of the Indus Valley civilization, around 2500 BCE, were among the most skilled. They heated carnelian to deepen its color, etched designs on beads with alkali and drilled long carnelian beads with hard stone drill bits, a slow job that could take days for a single bead. Their beads traveled as far as Mesopotamia, where they were found in the Royal Tombs of Ur.
The methods were simple and remained in use for thousands of years. A cutter roughed out a shape by chipping or sawing with abrasive sand, ground it on harder stone, and polished it with finer powders on wood or leather. Holes were drilled with a bow drill and abrasive.
Seals, intaglios and cameos
Engraving stones goes back to the cylinder seals of Mesopotamia, rolled into wet clay to mark ownership. Egyptian scarabs served a similar purpose. Greek and Roman gem engravers carried the art to a high level with intaglios, designs cut into the stone, set in signet rings and pressed into wax. They used a small rotating drill tipped with abrasive and turned by a bow. The Romans also carved cameos, raised designs cut from banded stones such as onyx and sardonyx, so a white figure stood on a darker ground. Carnelian and onyx were favorites because they took fine detail and released easily from wax.
Cabochons and polished crystals
For most of history, translucent and transparent gems were cut en cabochon, as smooth domes. A cabochon keeps as much weight as possible and shows color well, which mattered when cutters could not yet control the path of light through a stone. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and garnets in Roman, Byzantine and medieval jewelry were usually cabochons, polished pebbles or tumbled crystals. Romans often strung or set natural emerald and diamond crystals with little or no cutting.
Thin slices of garnet cut flat and set over patterned gold foil were an exception. This cloisonne garnet work, seen in Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian jewelry, required sawing and grinding very precise flat plates, a sign of skill long before true faceting. The medieval jewelry page covers Sutton Hoo and related finds.
India and diamond
India was the world's main diamond source until the 18th century, with Borneo a minor second source, and Indian cutters worked diamond very early. Because diamond is the hardest natural substance, only diamond powder could grind it. Indian tradition favored keeping as much weight as possible, so cutters often polished the natural crystal faces and added irregular facets to hide flaws, leaving large, uneven stones. Many famous Indian stones, such as the Koh-i-Noor before its 19th-century recutting, were cut this way.
Faceting arrives in Europe
By the 14th century, European cutters were grinding facets on diamond. The earliest style was the point cut, an octahedron crystal with its faces polished. Grinding one point flat gave the table cut, which was common by the 15th century. The history of faceted gems and diamond cutting history pages follow this sequence step by step: table cut, then rose cut in the 16th century, then early brilliants such as the Mazarin and Peruzzi cuts in the 17th century, then the old mine and old European cuts.
The polishing wheel, a horizontal metal disc called a scaife charged with diamond powder and oil, made this progress possible. The scaife spread in the 15th century through cutting centers such as Bruges and Venice, and later Antwerp and Amsterdam. Bruting, grinding one diamond against another to round it, also became standard.
Colored stones followed more slowly. Faceted rubies, sapphires and garnets became more common in the 16th and 17th centuries, often as table or rose cuts. As faceting spread, cutters learned that transparent stones showed more life with facets, while opaque and phenomenal stones still looked best as cabochons.
Renaissance hardstone carving
During the Renaissance, Milan and Florence led European hardstone carving. Workshops made cameos, vessels and the inlaid stone pictures called pietra dura, supported by patrons such as the Medici. The page on Renaissance gem cutters covers this tradition.
Idar-Oberstein
The towns of Idar and Oberstein in western Germany became a center for agate cutting from at least the 16th century. Local agate and jasper were ground on large sandstone wheels powered by water mills along the streams. Workers lay on their stomachs on benches in front of the wheels, pressing stones against them. When the local deposits ran low in the 19th century, emigrants from the region found agate in southern Brazil and shipped it home, and Idar-Oberstein grew into a major center for colored stone cutting and dyeing. The Idar-Oberstein page covers its history.
The 19th and 20th centuries
Several changes shaped modern cutting. Steam and then electric power replaced hand and water power. The mechanical bruting machine and the diamond saw arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1919 Marcel Tolkowsky published calculations for brilliant-cut proportions, giving cutters a target for round diamonds that became the basis of the round brilliant cut.
For colored gems, the faceting machine with an angle protractor and index wheel let cutters reproduce angles precisely. Amateur gem cutting grew after the mid-20th century, especially in the United States, and faceting diagrams spread through clubs and books. Cutting centers shifted too: Bangkok and Chanthaburi in Thailand, Jaipur in India and Sri Lanka grew as colored stone centers, while Surat in India became a large diamond cutting hub.
Modern machines
Today cutters use lasers to saw and shape diamonds, 3D scanners and planning software to map rough and get the most value from it, and automated polishing machines for small stones. The modern gem cutting technology page describes these tools. Hand skill remains central for colored stones, where the cutter judges color, inclusions and orientation in ways software only partly handles.
Frequently asked questions
When did people start faceting gemstones?
Faceting of diamond was underway in Europe by the 14th century, beginning with point and table cuts. Polished crystal faces were used earlier in India and Rome.
Why were old gems cut as cabochons?
Cabochons save weight, show color well and were within the reach of early polishing tools. Cutters had not yet learned to control light with facets.
What is a scaife?
A scaife is a spinning metal wheel coated with diamond powder and oil, used to polish facets on diamonds. It spread in Europe in the 15th century.