A Bright Spark
Chaumet’s new diamond cut keeps its Bee My Love collection buzzing
Is it possible to improve upon brilliance? Chaumet’s lapidary team thinks it has. Following three years of intensive research and development, the maison recently unveiled Taille Impératrice, a new diamond cut with a unique hexagonal shape and 88 facets. Its claim to fame over the well-loved brilliant cut is that it purportedly reflects more light. Brilliance is, after all, still not perfection.
Jean-marc Mansvelt, Chaumet’s CEO, reveals what makes Taille Impératrice more brilliant than the brilliant. “For Taille Impératrice, the reflection of light takes place on the table and on all facets of the crown. This is not the case with the brilliant cut, which reflects light only off the table and on the highest facets of the crown. The angle of light reflection of the Taille Impératrice is also nearly 50 per cent wider. The light is therefore captured and returned in a greater number of directions, which is what creates this extraordinary brilliance.”
No doubt, mathematical precision has contributed to the beauty of the cut, but far from cold, calculated perfection, each stone also carries with it a human touch. “The cutting is essentially artisanal,” Mansvelt says. “Only the first phase in the cutting and preforming of the rough diamond involves the use of a scanner and a laser. After that, each facet is cut by hand.”
For its debut, the Taille Impératrice has found a perfect fit in Chaumet’s iconic Bee My Love collection. That its hexagonal shape is an impeccable match for the collection’s sixsided honeycomb motif is no coincidence.
“In the Bee My Love collection, we played a lot with variations on gold by offering different dimensions of the honeycomb cell, different colours of gold, and combining gold with pavé and demipavé. After having deeply explored goldsmithing, we sought to focus on the other fundamental savoir faire of jewellery: the art of lapidary,” Mansvelt explains. “With Taille Impératrice, the graphic aesthetic of Bee My Love and its honeycomb motif are now expressed in both metal and stone, the two treasures of Earth.”
The new cut shines in a number of new additions to the collection, including a three-stone ring, a Bee My Love Y necklace, and a bracelet.
“By creating this new diamond cut, we are affirming that Chaumet cultivates both tradition and innovation,” Mansvelt enthuses. “It is a characteristic of a great maison that it be able to revisit its classics while offering new things.”