The centre stone is chosen. The carat weight is settled, the certificate is in hand, and the buyer at the consultation table has been quietly thrilled for 20 minutes. Then the next question lands and the room goes quiet. Which setting. Claw, pavé, bezel or halo. Most buyers arrive at Smith and Green’s 9 Hatton […]
A client returned to the 9 Hatton Garden showroom on a Tuesday afternoon last spring with a story that arrives more often than it should. Her engagement ring had slipped down a hotel basin drain in Lisbon, the hotel plumber had not been able to retrieve it, and her insurer was now asking for documents […]
There is a small ritual that takes place every working day at the consultation desks of 9 Hatton Garden. A buyer is handed a folded piece of paper, slightly larger than a passport, with a hologram in one corner and a string of numbers running down its left edge. They glance at it, smile politely, […]
A couple sits at the consultation table on a quiet Thursday at 9 Hatton Garden, the engagement ring already a year old on the left hand, the wedding eight months away. They have come in to choose the wedding bands. Within ten minutes, it becomes clear that the engagement ring was bought in a hurry, […]
The question arrives more often now than it did five years ago, and it arrives with more precision. Not “is this diamond ethical?” which is a question that wants a reassuring answer but “what does ethical actually mean here, and how do I verify it?” That is a better question. It deserves a better answer […]
There is a particular kind of buyer who arrives at Smith and Green already knowing they do not want a diamond. Not because a diamond is wrong but because something else is more right. A deep Kashmir-blue sapphire in an 18ct white gold bezel. A vivid Mozambique ruby flanked by trillion-cut white diamonds. A Colombian […]
Most couples arrive at this question after they have already decided they want a white metal. The stone is chosen or nearly chosen. The setting style is taking shape. And then the jeweller asks: platinum or white gold? For many buyers, the question lands as an unwelcome complication. Both metals look the same in the […]
Before any conversation about carat weight or setting style, there is one question a diamond buyer should ask, and almost nobody does: Who graded this stone, and does that matter? The short answer is yes. It matters considerably. A diamond certificate is not a universal document. It is the output of a specific laboratory, using […]
Stop worrying about fluorescence. Or rather: stop worrying about it without understanding it first. Because the answer is not “fluorescence is fine, ignore it” and it is not “fluorescence is a serious problem you need to avoid.” The answer is specific, and it depends on the stone in front of you and the grade on […]
Pick up a diamond grading certificate in a Hatton Garden consultation room, and you are holding something considerably more specific than a piece of reassurance. You are holding a scientific assessment: a record of how one diamond compares to every other diamond ever graded, produced by one of the two laboratories most buyers will encounter. […]
