Faceting, the cutting of flat polished planes onto a gem, is a fairly recent idea in the long history of jewelry. For thousands of years most gems were polished into beads or rounded cabochons, or carved. Regular faceting developed slowly in India and Europe from the late Middle Ages, first on diamond, and moved through a series of styles: the point cut, the table cut, the rose cut and finally the brilliant. Colored stones followed their own path, borrowing some diamond styles and developing the step cut and mixed cuts.
Before facets: beads, cabochons and carving
Ancient jewelers in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and the Mediterranean worked gems such as carnelian, lapis lazuli, garnet and emerald. They drilled beads, ground domed cabochons, and engraved seals and cameos. The Romans set uncut diamond crystals in rings, valuing them for hardness more than sparkle.
Polishing a smooth dome brings out color and phenomena such as cat's eye and star effects, and it is far easier than cutting precise flat planes. Faceting only pays off when a stone's brilliance and fire matter more than its body color, and when the tools exist to cut very hard materials accurately.
Faceting in India
India was the world's main diamond source for most of history, and Indian polishers worked diamond long before Europeans did. Their approach aimed to keep as much weight as possible. They often polished the natural crystal faces, smoothed away flaws and added extra facets wherever the shape allowed. The results could look irregular to European eyes, but they preserved carat weight, which was the main measure of value.
Many famous historic diamonds, such as the Koh-i-Noor before its 19th-century recutting, first left India in this kind of shallow, irregular cut. The page on the Golconda diamond mines covers where these stones came from.
The point cut
In Europe, organized diamond polishing appeared by the 14th century in cities including Venice, Paris and Bruges. The first standard style was the point cut. Diamond often forms as an octahedron, two four-sided pyramids joined at their bases. Polishers smoothed and brightened these eight natural faces, sometimes adjusting the angles slightly, and set the stone with its top point upward.
Diamond can only be worked with diamond, so this was slow work done by rubbing stones together or using diamond powder. The point cut shows little fire, but it has a hard, bright look that appealed to medieval buyers.
The table cut
By the 15th century, polishers had begun grinding off the top point of the octahedron to make a flat face called the table. They often ground a smaller flat face, the culet, at the bottom. The resulting table cut looks dark in many old pieces because its proportions return little light to the eye, but it gave a large flat surface that showed off the stone's clarity.
The table cut was common in Renaissance jewelry. Cutters later added small corner facets to make variations, and these led toward more complex shapes. The development of the polishing wheel, or scaife, charged with diamond dust and oil, helped make flatter, more regular facets possible. Flemish workshops in Antwerp played a part in that change.
The rose cut
The rose cut appeared in the 16th century and became one of the main styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. It has a flat base and a domed top covered in triangular facets that meet at a point, like a rosebud. Common versions include the Dutch rose and the Antwerp rose, which differ in the number and layout of facets.
Rose cuts work well with flat or thin rough that cannot yield a deep stone. They catch candlelight with soft flashes and were widely used in Georgian and early Victorian jewelry. Amsterdam cutters were known for them.
The road to the brilliant
Through the 17th century, cutters experimented with stones that had a crown above and a pavilion below, designed to return more light. A well-known step was the Mazarin cut, associated with Cardinal Mazarin, which had 17 crown facets. Venetian cutter Vincenzo Peruzzi is credited with refining it into a style with 33 crown facets in the late 17th century, though records are thin.
These designs led to the old mine cut, a cushion-shaped brilliant with a high crown, small table and large culet, common in the 18th and 19th centuries. The old European cut, round with a circular girdle, followed as bruting machines in the late 19th century made round outlines easier to produce.
The modern round brilliant
In 1919 Marcel Tolkowsky published a study that used optics to calculate proportions for a round brilliant that balanced brightness and fire. His work became the basis of the modern round brilliant cut, with 57 or 58 facets. Power-driven sawing and bruting machines in the early 20th century made such precise cuts practical in quantity.
Since then, cutters have adjusted the brilliant to favor different looks and added many patented and branded cuts. The full story of diamond is told on the diamond cutting history page.
Colored stone faceting
Colored stones developed along slightly different lines. Many retained cabochon cutting for longer, especially opaque and phenomenal gems. When faceting did spread, the goal was usually to show off color more than fire, since most colored stones have lower dispersion than diamond.
The step cut, with long rectangular facets parallel to the girdle, suited emerald and other stones with strong color or inclusions, and it gave the emerald cut its name. Mixed cuts combine a brilliant-style crown with a step-cut pavilion, or the reverse, and are common in sapphire and ruby from Asian cutting centers. Cutters also orient colored stones to get the best face-up color from pleochroic material.
In the 20th century, designers in places such as Idar-Oberstein developed sculptural fantasy cuts. Precision faceting machines also let hobby and professional cutters produce complex designs. See gemstone cutting history for more on colored stones.
Frequently asked questions
What was the first faceted diamond cut?
In Europe, the first standard style was the point cut, which polished the natural octahedral faces of a diamond crystal. Indian polishers had worked diamond earlier, often with irregular faceting that kept as much weight as possible.
When was the brilliant cut invented?
The brilliant developed gradually in the 17th and 18th centuries through styles such as the Mazarin and old mine cuts. The modern round brilliant took its shape after Marcel Tolkowsky's 1919 study of ideal proportions.
Why do old table cut diamonds look dark?
Their flat, shallow proportions let much of the light leak out instead of returning it to the eye. Later cuts added crown and pavilion facets at angles chosen to send more light back up through the top.