Lab-grown diamonds have been a topic of concern for the industry for decades. We chart the paranoia.
How long has the diamond industry been worried about lab-grown diamonds posing a threat to the natural industry? As JCK’s archives show, a long, long time.
1880
Dealers in diamonds are frequently asked by their customers if the process of making artificial diamonds has yet met with such success as to depreciate the genuine ones in value. The London Photographic News gives the following description of the process of manufacture and clearly intimates that there is no danger of genuine diamonds depreciating in value at present.… “The diamonds are, however, of the most minute character, and Mr. Hannay, of Glasgow, who has thus succeeded in making them, frankly owns that the game is not wor