A Brief History of Hearts & Arrows

The hearts and arrows diamond is a rare and special gemstone. It only appears in the finest ideal cut round brilliant diamonds. In the 1970's the Japanese developed a special viewer called the Firescope. It was a light-mapping instrument which evaluated the quality of diamonds. In the late 1980's Takanori Tamura first noticed the patterning that he saw as a mandala, the Buddhist 8-spoked wheel of life, and which we see as a set of 8 hearts and 8 arrows. Of the thousands of diamonds he observed, almost none displayed this special pattern. After years of extensive research, he commissioned cutter Kioishi Higuchi to cut a stone with the highest possible light return. Known as the Eightstar diamond, it became the predecessor of hearts and arrows. By the early 1990's, a H&A viewer was developed allowing viewers to analyze not only the optical performance of a stone, but also its cut symmetry and facet alignment. Shortly after that, the first H&A gemstone was cut in Japan.

Superior Craftsmanship

This phenomenal pattern appears in brilliant cut stones that have excellent parallelism and symmetry. When viewed from the crown, 8 arrowheads are seen, which are the 8 pavilion main facets. The 8 heart shapes are viewed through the pavilion and are the result of the reflection of 16 lower girdle facets. Only a true master cutter can create H&A diamonds. The bezel, star, lower girdle, upper girdle and pavilion main facets must be aligned precisely 180 degrees opposite each other, and all the facets must be the exact same size and shape, or the pattern will be incomplete.

A Buyer's Guide

To gain the optimum hearts and arrows diamond reflection and refraction of light, it requires a 15% greater waste of the original rough stone. While it takes approximately an hour to cut a standard round brilliant, it can take up to 4 days or even longer to finish a H&A stone because of the precision required. Due to this, only a small percentage, about 1 tenth of 1% of diamonds will display this pattern. The greater time in cutting and increased diamond waste create a high demand for these gemstones.