Press Release
For immediate release
Louisville-based luxury jeweler, Seng Jewelers has announced the acquisition of the trademark and cutting technique of Eightstar Diamond Company. Seng originally partnered with the Eightstar Diamond Company, formerly of California, to cut the exclusive Seng Firey Diamond™. Presented with the opportunity to purchase the trademark, Seng has decided to cut diamonds in-house and move the Eightstar Diamond Company™ to its local manufacturing facility, likely the first of its kind in the city. Seng Jewelers has been manufacturing its finer special jewelry for over 40 years.
For over a century, Seng Jewelers has offered the finest quality jewelry in a warm and friendly setting. Founded in 1889 by the Seng family, the establishment was purchased by Benn B. Davis in 1938. It remains in the family, now in its third generation, currently owned by Scott and Lee Davis. Seng offers customers exclusive designs handmade in 18K gold and platinum. Jewelry is designed and created on site. We specialize in Seng Firey Diamonds ™, Seng Firey Princess ™ and Seng Firey Cushion™ diamonds and beautiful colored gemstones from around the world. Seng is also a prominent dealer in period and antique jewelry and has purchased estate and antique collections from North America, Europe and Asia. Seng has had some very unusual and rare finds recently purchasing one of the most important aquamarine necklaces in existence today.
Besides offering customers fine jewelry, we professionally counsel and educate each buyer about our products before a purchase is made so clients can appreciate the beauty, durability and value of their selection.
The Seng Firey Diamond™
Cut from the heart by EightStar™
A step beyond ideal
The diamond above is an actual photograph of a
Seng Firey Diamond™
What you are seeing in this photograph is what you see in every Seng Firey Diamond™; perfect optical symmetry.Seng Firey Diamond™
The proper proportions in which to cut a diamond were determined in 1917, however it wasn’t until the invention of the SymmetriScope™ in 1984, that light return and symmetry could be objectively determined.
The SymmetriScope™ showed that most ideal cut diamonds, were far from ideal. Why? Because they failed to return light properly.
The image below left is a typical ideally proportioned diamond. The white areas in the photograph show light escaping through the pavilion of the diamond. This is light not being returned to the eye. These areas will appear dark when viewed under normal conditions, making the stone appear smaller.
Photos above were taken through the SymmetriScope™.The degree to which a diamond glows with white light is called brilliance. The degree to which it bursts with broad flashes of rainbow color is called fire. The Seng Firey Diamond™ is cut for maximum brilliancy, maximum fire, perfect optical symmetry and light return from one edge to the other.
Japanese Beginnings
The story of the EightStar Diamond Company begins in Japan, with a visionary businessman named Mr. Takanori Tamura
For two decades until the early 1980s, Mr. Tamura owned the largest distributorship of Sony products in Japan. He had a small army of sales people and did hundreds of millions in business. He was a gentleman in Japanese business society, a university graduate who propelled himself to the top.
On his 43rd birthday in 1984, Mr. Tamura sent a shock wave through his company when he announced he was retiring and turning the operation over to his employees. For this, he was headline news all over Asia.
A prophetic meeting several years earlier, however, would bring Mr. Tamura to his next career. A diamond dealer, Mr. Yasuhito Shigetomi, had visited Mr. Tamura to interest him in buying a diamond.
Mr. Shigetomi was known for his beautifully cut stones. He introduced Mr. Tamura to the more scientific aspects of diamond cutting, explaining Tolkowsky and the concept of Ideal proportions.
When Mr. Tamura asked the gentleman what type of instrument or scope he used to demonstrate Tolkowsky's theories of light entering and exiting the crown of the diamond, Mr. Shigetomi was dumbfounded. He had never been asked such a question.
Seven years later, just after Mr. Tamura had changed his life, Mr. Shigetomi returned with the result of his "back-to-the-drawing-board" endeavor. He had created the Firescope. Mr. Tamura looked into this device and agreed that it was amazingly easy to detect the quality of the cutting:
"With a shock, it suddenly occurred to me that what we had here was a device which could clearly and unmistakably show how good or bad a diamond was. All that was needed was the human eye. All that you had to do was look for yourself..."
Mr. Tamura and Mr. Shigetomi went into partnership to market the scope. Because he was so well known in Japan, Mr. Tamura was able to develop associations with important people in the diamond industry. He and his partner were invited to demonstrate the FireScope at important jewelry and gemstone trade shows in New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles.
But for most people in the diamond trade at the time, the invention of the scope was not a significant event. Whenever Mr. Tamura demonstrated it, many jewelers invariably saw things in their stones they might not have noticed otherwise - things they perhaps did not want to see. The device did not find the hoped-for receptive market.
Instead of marketing the Firescope, the partners decided to use their device to market diamonds that were proportioned according to Tolkowsky.
Creation of the EightStar™
His search was a series of constant disappointments: each day diamond after diamond did not exhibit the hoped-for qualities when placed in the Firescope. Instead, the scope mercilessly showed every detour from the correct path of light.
This search eventually led Mr. Tamura through the diamond centers in America and Europe. He still did not discover great quantities of diamonds without light leakage, but he did find a few small stones that performed perfectly under the Firescope. These stones all showed a unique eight-rayed pattern.
During this time, many extremely well-qualified cutting professionals tried to produce what Mr. Tamura wanted - but to no avail. The partners changed the business plan once again. This time they decided to begin their own diamond polishing endeavor, to try to cut diamonds that would appear perfect in the punishing FireScope.
Mr. Tamura employed Mr. Kioyishi Higuchi, an experienced cutter of colored gems and diamonds. Higuchi will be remembered forever in the history of diamond cutting as the name of the first cutter to actually realize Tolkowsky's dreams.
Mr. Higuchi was given what appeared to be an impossible task for the diamond industry - to make each diamond not vary from the extremely precise symmetry required to make the pattern of the eight-rayed star.
In the mid 1980s, Mr. Higuchi achieved his breakthrough after an entire year of constant setbacks and defeats - including a huge investment in wasted diamonds. Mr. Higuchi announced during the early months of his research that only one of Tolkowsky's calculations seemed to apply.
He found that using the exact application of Tolkowsky’s recommended antles and proportions in every way except this one seemed to prohibit, rather than allow him to make the diamond that Mr. Tamura wanted.
It then took him the better part of a year following this discovery to finally learn what he needed to know about diamonds to make them do what Mr. Tamura wanted each one to do. When Mr. Higuchi was able to create them at will, then, and only then, did Mr. Tamura name the cut he created the EightStar™.
Now Seng presents The Seng Firey Diamond™ cut from the heart by Eightstar™. Cut at Seng Jewelers in Louisville, KY USA.
