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RUSSIAN BRILLIANTS
Russian scientists have taken a page from Mother Nature's achievement by replicating a gem quality diamond. Russian Brilliants™ is laboratory grown. It was originally developed for use in the Russian satellite optics program. These cultivated gems are hand-cut and come in different shapes and sizes. With their brilliance and fire they possess many of the same characteristics and optical properties of a natural diamond. They are very hard and will cut glass!

Personal I.D. Inscription Available. Inscribed by major lab and can be seen under 10X magnification.

Some jewelers have difficulty distinguishing between Russian Brilliants™ and a natural diamond. The eye appeal is equivalent to the world's finest D-E color, flawless diamond. Beautifully hand-cut, Russian Brilliants™ is convincingly the closest clone to a natural diamond. The appearance of Russian Brilliants™ will last forever.

STANDARD CUBIC ZIRCONIA
At times man-made gems are more beautiful (rainbow affect) than the natural diamonds they imitate. CZ will take on a pale grayish tone when exposed to sunlight over a period of time. This does not happen with Russian Brilliants™. Unlike a naturally formed diamond, CZ components are purer and the molecules gather in ideal conditions. Couple this with an unsophisticated machine cut manufacturing process and you arrive at the standard cubic zirconia stone.

MOISSANITE
Moissanite, although relatively new, does resemble a diamond. It usually has a yellowish tint. It has a silicon carbide composition. Upon close examination, moissanite is usually identifiable. This is because silicon carbide, in the manufacturing process becomes doubly refractive. The double refractive index diminishes the illusion of being a natural diamond. The cost of this stone is much higher than other man-made diamonds.

Photos by Tino Hammid

Tired of blue diamonds whose colors remind you more of steel wool rather than sapphires? Tired of red diamonds that resemble muddy garnets rather than majestic rubies? Russia's crystal growers sure hope so because they are making diamonds in a lab with colors that often put nature's to shame.

That's why man-made diamonds have become one of Russia's hottest, pardon the pun, growth industries.

To give the world a mouthwatering glimpse of Russia’s many break-thru hues, the Ultimate Created Diamond Co., based in Golden, Colorado, used the recent Tucson Gem Show to show the largest collection of created colored diamonds ever seen in the West. Ordinarily, the Tucson Show, held every February, is not thought of as a diamond event. But company president Alex Grizenko used his true blues and reds to make sure that synthetic diamonds would dominate the attention spans of the thousands of gem and gemological curiosity-seekers who travel yearly to this loose confederation of convention center, hotel and tent shows.

Instead of blue stones that were blue in name only, the Russian stones seemed worthy of being blue. And the reds were, as they say, to die for. Of course, there was a wide array of yellow and golden colors, too. But they were last year’s news from Russia. Blues and reds are this year’s. Next year, Grizenko predicts, Russian pinks and oranges will be the headline getters. Interestingly, the Russians seem in no hurry to make colorless diamonds. Grizenko says they could do so but won’t for now since they aren’t as needed as fine-hue colored diamonds. “Although the labs with which we work have produced stones with color as high as ‘F’ on the GIA color-grading scale, we don’t see much demand for colorless synthetic diamonds because colorless natural diamonds are so widely available,” he explains. “We think demand would be far greater for ultra-rare fancy colors. So we’ve concentrated on making those.”