Unique Jewels Blog

Welcome to Music Friday, when we celebrate songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. As Bill Withers introduced “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh” during his March 1974 appearance on The Midnight Special, he offered a deceptively simple explanation for the song: “It’s a funny thing how people who mean an awful lot to you can make you feel just bad sometimes.” Then he launched into one of soul music’s most memorable examinations of love’s contradictions.



The jewelry connection arrives in the very first line. Withers compares love to “a chunk of gold” that is “hard to gain, and hard to hold.” It’s a fitting metaphor for something precious that demands effort to acquire but can be surprisingly difficult to keep. The song quickly makes clear that the same love capable of producing laughter can also produce tears.

Withers deepens the metaphor with a rose. Love may be soft to touch and beautiful to behold, but “love has thorns,” and those thorns can hurt. The imagery captures the vulnerability that comes with giving yourself completely to another person. By the song’s emotional climax, Withers admits that he has given everything he has to give, leaving him defenseless when the relationship begins to unravel.

Then comes one of the song’s most striking images: a boulder perched at the top of a mountain. Once someone starts the rock rolling downhill, Withers observes, “you can’t make it stop.” The heavy, irreversible momentum becomes a metaphor for emotional choices.

“The Same Love That Made Me Laugh” appeared on Withers’s 1974 album +’Justments, with the title pronounced “add-justments.” Released as a single, it reached #50 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #10 on the Billboard R&B chart. It also became a Top 40 hit in Canada. Diana Ross later recorded the song for her 1977 album Baby It’s Me.

Withers brought an unusually grounded perspective to his music. Born in 1938 in Slab Fork, WV, the youngest of six children, he grew up in a coal-mining town and struggled with a stutter. At 17, he joined the US Navy, serving for nine years and using speech therapy and singing to overcome his stutter.

After moving to Los Angeles, Withers worked at an aircraft plant while pursuing music, saving money to finance his own demo recordings. Even after “Ain’t No Sunshine” became a million-selling hit, he initially kept his day job, wary of the unpredictability of the music business. His eventual catalog included “Lean on Me,” “Lovely Day” and “Just the Two of Us,” among other enduring classics.

Withers won three Grammy Awards, including Best Rhythm & Blues Song for “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. He retired from performing and recording in the mid-1980s, leaving behind a remarkably influential body of work.

Withers died in Los Angeles on March 30, 2020, at age 81 from heart complications.

Please check out Withers's live performance of "The Same Love That Made Me Laugh" on The Midnight Special. The lyrics are below if you'd like to sing along...

"The Same Love That Made Me Laugh"
Written and performed by Bill Withers.

Your love is like a a chunk of gold
Hard to gain and hard to hold

Like a rose that's soft to touch
Love has gone and it hurts so much

Well and why...
Must the same love that made me laugh
Make me cry?

Well now you think of love as sittin' on a mountain
Think of it as being a great big rock
Won't you think before you started to roll it down
Because once you start it, you can't make it stop

I've given all I have to give
And if you don't want me
I don't want to live

Well and why...
Must the same love that made me laugh,
Why you wanna make me cry?
Why you wanna make me cry?
Why you wanna make me cry?
Why do you wanna make me mess up my pillow?
Got me cryin' like a weeping willow

Why you wanna make me cry?
Why you wanna make me cry?
Why you wanna make me cry?
Why you wanna make me cry?



Credit: Screen capture via YouTube / The Midnight Special.

More than a century ago, a passion for pink held by a powerful Chinese empress helped transform a remote corner of Southern California into one of the world’s most important sources of tourmaline. The unlikely connection between Empress Dowager Cixi, Tiffany & Co. and San Diego County’s gemstone mines makes October’s birthstone even more fascinating.



Cixi, who ruled China during the final decades of the Qing dynasty, was famously enamored with pink and pink tourmaline. Her enthusiasm created enormous demand at the Chinese Imperial Court, sending miners in San Diego County scrambling to uncover more of the rosy gem.



Between 1902 and 1910, approximately 120 tons of gem-quality pink tourmaline from San Diego County were shipped to China, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum. The Himalaya Mine in the Mesa Grande district was among the major producers, while other famous local deposits included the Tourmaline Queen, Tourmaline King, Stewart and Pala Chief mines.

Tiffany & Co. played an important role in connecting the California mines with the imperial court. Tiffany gemologist J.L. Tannenbaum commissioned Southern California miners to fulfill orders for the Chinese market. Once the tourmaline arrived in China, craftsmen carved the material into snuff bottles, decorative objects and jewelry.

Cixi died in 1908, and the Qing dynasty fell in 1912. With the loss of the imperial market, San Diego County’s tourmaline boom quickly faded. Yet the region continued to produce spectacular material, including a remarkable pocket at the Pala Stewart Mine in 1969 that yielded about a ton of hot-pink tourmaline.

The story is an extraordinary chapter in the history of a gemstone that seems almost designed to capture attention. Tourmaline has been an official October birthstone since 1952, when the National Association of Jewelers (now Jewelers of America) updated a list that hadn't changed since it was originated in 1912. Opal is October’s other official birthstone.

The name tourmaline comes from the Sinhalese words tura mali, meaning “stone with mixed colors.” Few gems live up to that description more dramatically. Tourmaline occurs in shades ranging from pink, red, peach and orange to green, blue, yellow, brown, purple and black. It can also display multiple colors within a single crystal, producing spectacular bi-color and tri-color gems.

Those colors are largely determined by trace elements incorporated into the tourmaline’s chemical structure. Lithium-rich varieties can produce blue, green, red, yellow and pink hues, while iron-rich tourmaline tends to be black or bluish-black. Different combinations of elements and crystal chemistry create the remarkable palette that makes the gem so distinctive.

Tourmaline is also durable enough for everyday jewelry, measuring 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale of hardness. Today, important deposits are found in Brazil, Afghanistan, Madagascar, East Africa and elsewhere, while San Diego County remains celebrated for its historic gem-bearing pegmatites.

Credits: Tourmaline image by Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Image of Empress Dowager Cixi (cropped) by John Yu Shuinling, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

It may look like a colorful slice of agate, but Fordite has a surprisingly industrial origin. Also known as Detroit agate, Motor City agate or paint rock, this eye-catching material is actually made from layers of hardened automotive paint salvaged from the factories where American cars were once manufactured.



Fordite isn't a gemstone or mineral in the geological sense. Instead, it is an accidental byproduct of an earlier era of automobile production — one that has been cut, polished and transformed into colorful cabochons for rings, pendants, earrings and other jewelry.



The story begins on the automotive assembly lines of the 20th century. When car bodies were painted by hand, overspray accumulated on the tracks, racks and skids that carried the vehicles through the factory. The paint-covered equipment then traveled with the cars into industrial ovens, where the paint was baked and hardened.

Then came another car, another color and another trip through the oven.



Repeated thousands of times, those layers eventually formed thick slabs of intensely cured paint. According to the Gemological Institute of America, one-inch-thick Fordite can contain approximately 997 layers of paint. Eventually, the buildup became too thick or obstructive and had to be removed. Some enterprising factory workers recognized that the discarded material revealed extraordinary patterns when cut and polished — and began saving it.



The resulting material can look remarkably geological. Waves, stripes, swirls and intricate bands of color mimic the patterns found in natural agate, while the particular colors can offer clues to the era and factory where the material originated. Fordite collected from the 1960s and 1970s is especially prized for its bold colors, reflecting the bright automotive finishes popular during those decades.

And Fordite isn't exclusively from Ford factories. The name has become a general term for automotive paint slag from various manufacturing plants. Material from the Corvette assembly plant in Bowling Green, KY, for example, is sometimes called “corvetteite.”

For jewelry designers, every piece presents a little bit of automotive history in wearable form. A cutter can slice through the layers to reveal a particular pattern, then shape and polish the material into a lightweight cabochon. Because the layers vary from one piece to another, no two Fordite specimens look exactly alike.

There is also a finite-supply story behind the material. Modern automotive factories use electrostatic painting techniques that dramatically reduce overspray, eliminating the thick accumulations that produced classic Fordite. In other words, the old “Fordite mines” are essentially dry. What remains comes from material salvaged decades ago and preserved by collectors and former factory workers.

That scarcity, combined with its vivid colors and American manufacturing heritage, has helped transform an industrial nuisance into a collectible jewelry material.

Please check out the video of Duluth-based lapidary artist Taylor's first-hand experience with Fordite, below.



Credits: Screen captures via YouTube / Taylor's Rocksmithery.

The Carolina Hurricanes are celebrating their second Stanley Cup victory with a championship ring that turns an unforgettable hockey season into a dazzling piece of fine jewelry that's loaded with surprises. Unveiled September 27 at a private ceremony in Raleigh, NC, the white-gold ring was designed and created by Jason of Beverly Hills in collaboration with Hurricanes' leadership and features nearly 900 individually set diamonds and natural red rubies.



At the center of the ring’s face, the Carolina Hurricanes logo is rendered in round white diamonds and positioned atop a diamond-encrusted Stanley Cup trophy. A field of custom-cut red rubies provides a dramatic backdrop, while the words “STANLEY CUP” and “CHAMPIONS” frame the design in diamonds.

Sixty-six natural red rubies encircle the ring's perimeter, representing the 66 goals Carolina scored during its playoff run. A sculpted rope motif wraps around the ring as a symbol of teamwork, unity and shared responsibility. The design was inspired by a Hurricanes locker-room tradition in which players were reminded that everyone on the team was “pulling on the same rope.”



One side commemorates the 2026 championship with 53 points of diamonds spelling out “2026,” representing Carolina’s 53 regular-season victories. The phrase “STRESS GAME” appears nearby, capturing the Hurricanes’ relentless style of play built around pace, pressure and constant attack. The opposite side is personalized for each player, featuring the player’s name, jersey number and Hurricanes logotype.



Inside the shank, the ring records the team’s 16-3 postseason journey, including the result of every playoff series. Each player’s signature is also engraved along the bottom of the ring, making every ring a uniquely personal keepsake.

But perhaps the most delightful surprises are hidden inside.



A removable championship puck pendant rests within the ring. Engraved with the Stanley Cup and personalized with the player’s number, the miniature puck can be removed and worn separately. Once it is lifted out, a hidden image of Stormy, the Hurricanes mascot, is revealed. Stormy is circled with rubies and diamonds.



The puck also uncovers another distinctly Carolina detail: the North Carolina state flag sits beneath the ring top, surrounded by 42 white diamonds representing the 42 goals scored during the Eastern Conference Final and Stanley Cup Final. The flag is encircled by the players’ jersey numbers as a tribute to the team’s “Storm Surge” victory celebration.

Additional ruby details inside include 69 points of natural red rubies commemorating the team’s combined regular-season and postseason victories.

“Every detail reflects the character of this team, from the way we played to the people who made this season unforgettable,” Hurricanes General Manager Eric Tulsky said.

Credit: Images courtesy of Jason of Beverly Hills.

Metal detector enthusiast Kalle Lappinen got the kind of signal hobbyists dream about while treasure hunting near the village center of Sysmä, Finland, earlier this month. Beneath the soil was a Viking Age hoard containing thousands of silver coins and jewelry — a remarkable bounty weighing about 10 pounds and now recognized as the largest of its kind ever found in Finland.



Sysmä is about 105 miles northeast of Helsinki, and Lappinen was searching in an area he knew well when his detector delivered an extraordinary signal. As he began digging, his handheld probe “roared,” he told The New York Times.

“With the fury of a monkey, I dug through the soil, bottom moraine and cobblestones,” Lappinen recalled. About 18 inches below the surface, he uncovered what he described as “a pile of coins.”

After he had “recovered from the adrenaline rush,” he reported the discovery to authorities.

Then came an astonishing encore.

Not far from the first find, Lappinen’s detector sounded again. He dug a second hole and discovered another concentration of silver. Archaeologists from Lahti City Museums arrived the following day and recovered the artifacts under the direction of archaeologist Esko Tikkala.

The treasure is actually a kind of “double hoard.” The silver had been divided between two birch-bark containers buried about 12 meters, or 39 feet, apart.

The collection includes thousands of silver coins, plus a fragment of hacksilver — silver used as a form of payment — a silver bracelet, a silver fitting or mount, and a silver bead. The coins alone weigh approximately 4.5 kilograms, or nearly 10 pounds. Because the coins have not yet been cleaned, separated or counted, researchers have not established their exact number, although estimates put the total at more than 4,000.

The coins are preliminarily dated to between AD 1000-1050, placing the hoard near the end of the Viking Age. The collection also reflects the remarkably far-reaching silver economy of the era, with coins originating from areas that are now Sweden, Britain and Germany, along with Islamic dirhams from regions that are now part of Turkey and Iran.

The discovery easily surpasses Finland’s previous record, a hoard found at Nousiainen in 1895 containing approximately 1,700 coins and other objects weighing about 2.2 kilograms.

Why someone buried so much silver — and never returned for it — remains a mystery. It may have been a merchant’s savings or wealth hidden for safekeeping during a turbulent period.

Lappinen will likely receive substantial compensation for his record-breaking discovery.

For items made of precious metals, the Finnish Heritage Agency sets a statutory redemption price equal to at least the current market value of the raw metal plus a 25% bonus.

Credit: Photo by Esko Tikkala, courtesy of Lahti City Museums.

Welcome to Music Friday, when we celebrate songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, we're revisiting one of the Beatles' most exuberant expressions of young love: “I Feel Fine,” a 1964 chart-topper in which diamond rings become sparkling symbols of affection, generosity and a relationship that makes both partners really happy.



Written primarily by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, “I Feel Fine” captures the blissful simplicity of being in love. Lennon sings about a woman who is good to him, openly tells him she loves him and proudly shares that happiness with everyone around her. In return, he is thrilled by her affection and repeatedly declares, “I feel fine.”

The jewelry connection arrives when she tells the world that her “baby” buys her things — including diamond rings. Within the song's romantic storyline, the diamond rings are tangible expressions of how deeply the couple cares for each other. She is proud to tell everyone that he spoils her, and her happiness reinforces his own. Their love is reciprocal, openly celebrated and, quite simply, something that makes him feel great.

“I Feel Fine” was released in November 1964 as the A-side of the Beatles' eighth British single. In the US, the song appeared on the December 1964 album Beatles ’65. The single raced to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, while also topping charts in Britain and several other countries.

The song arrived during an extraordinary period for the Fab Four. After their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, Beatlemania exploded across the United States. At one point that year, The Beatles occupied all five positions at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, with 14 songs simultaneously in the Top 100.

Their rise ultimately produced sales on a staggering scale: Apple, the Beatles' company, reported that their catalog had sold more than 600 million records, tapes and CDs worldwide.

“I Feel Fine” also made recording history with the strange, buzzing note that opens the song. During a studio session, Lennon leaned his semi-acoustic Gibson guitar against Paul McCartney's bass amplifier. When McCartney played a low note on his bass, the guitar picked up the sound and produced an unexpected burst of feedback. Instead of dismissing it as a studio mistake, the Beatles and producer George Martin liked what they heard and decided to edit the feedback onto the beginning of the finished recording.

Lennon later proudly claimed the innovation as the Beatles' first recorded use of feedback, well before the technique became a defining sound of rock guitar.

And “I Feel Fine” wasn't confined to records and radio. On August 14, 1965, the Beatles taped their fourth and final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. When the episode aired on September 12, the band performed “I Feel Fine” along with “I'm Down,” “Act Naturally,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Help!” and “Yesterday.”

We invite you to enjoy the audio track of the Beatles performing “I Feel Fine.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along. And don’t forget to listen for the feedback effect that starts the song.

“I Feel Fine”
Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Performed by the Beatles.

Baby’s good to me, you know
She’s happy as can be, you know
She said so
I’m in love with her and I feel fine

Baby says she’s mine, you know
She tells me all the time, you know
She said so
I’m in love with her and I feel fine

I’m so glad that she’s my little girl
She’s so glad, she’s telling all the world

That her baby buys her things, you know
He buys her diamond rings, you know
She said so
She’s in love with me and I feel fine, mmm

Baby says she’s mine, you know
She tells me all the time, you know
She said so
I’m in love with her and I feel fine

I’m so glad that she’s my little girl
She’s so glad, she’s telling all the world

That her baby buys her things, you know
He buys her diamond rings, you know
She said so
She’s in love with me and I feel fine
She’s in love with me and I feel fine, mmm, mmm



Credit: Photo by Dezo Hoffmann, Distributed by Capitol Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Holiday shopping could be especially merry this year — and increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. The Mastercard Economics Institute (MEI) is forecasting a 5.5% year-over-year increase in US retail sales, excluding automobiles and gasoline, from November 1 through Christmas Eve. That would make 2026 the strongest holiday season for spending growth since 2022.



Online sales are expected to grow 11%, while in-store sales are forecast to rise 3.6%, suggesting that shoppers will continue moving comfortably between digital discovery and traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Mastercard says consumers enter the season with solid purchasing power, supported by a strong job market, wage growth and rising household wealth. About half of the projected increase in spending, however, is expected to reflect higher prices.

One of Mastercard's most interesting findings involves the growing influence of AI in retail purchasing decisions. Using aggregated and anonymized data, MEI compared spending by “AI power users” — consumers with paid AI subscriptions — with shoppers who don't use paid AI services.

Michelle Meyer, Mastercard Economics Institute chief economist, described these shoppers as “a lot more nimble” when discussing the findings on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street on September 23.

“We were able to have a unique lens to understand how consumers that use AI spend differently, and frankly, in some ways are just a lot more nimble,” Meyer said. She added that this flexibility can help consumers navigate an environment in which prices have increased.

The difference could be especially meaningful as we approach the holiday season. In 2025, AI power users spent a larger share of their holiday dollars before Thanksgiving than non-AI users, particularly on travel, clothing and jewelry. They also shopped at a broader range of merchants, including smaller and boutique businesses.

For jewelry shoppers, that could mean using AI to compare styles, retailers and prices, discover independent jewelers or research an engagement ring well before the traditional holiday shopping rush. Meyer said AI power users frequent a wider range of merchants, creating “an incredible market for those consumers, especially in a world where you are trying to find the best value.”

The next step is agentic commerce, in which AI agents can go beyond making recommendations. They can research products, compare options and potentially initiate or complete purchases with little manual intervention. Mastercard has separately projected that more than 300 million online shoppers globally could routinely use AI agents to shop and pay by 2030.

The company also provided some eye-opening facts about last-minute shoppers. Mastercard found that during the 2025 holiday season, more than 35% of in-store spending in jewelry, handbags, department stores and cosmetics between November 22 and Christmas Day occurred during the final week before Christmas. Across online and in-store purchases in those categories, average purchase values rose each day beginning December 15 and peaked on Christmas Eve.

Credit: Image by The Jeweler Blog using aichatapp.ai.

Imagine an iceberg floating in an ocean — except the iceberg is diamond, the ocean is liquid carbon, and the whole scene is unfolding deep inside a planet billions of miles away. A new experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is giving scientists a better understanding of how such a bizarre landscape could exist inside ice giants such as Uranus and Neptune.



The study, published in Nature Physics, found that diamond melts under extreme pressure at the toasty temperature of 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius), but much lower than previous experimental estimates. Using powerful ultraviolet lasers, researchers compressed tiny diamond samples to pressures greater than those found at the centers of Uranus and Neptune and temperatures hotter than the surface of the Sun.

The breakthrough helps resolve a two-decade-old disagreement between laboratory experiments and computer simulations about diamond's melting point. It also confirms something particularly strange about diamond: under these extraordinary conditions, liquid carbon is denser than solid diamond.

That means a chunk of solid diamond could float in a sea of molten carbon — much like an ice cube floats in water. LLNL researchers have dubbed these hypothetical floating chunks “diamond bergs.”

The finding adds an intriguing new dimension to the long-standing “diamond rain” theory. Scientists believe the enormous pressure and heat deep inside Uranus and Neptune can break apart methane and other carbon-containing molecules, allowing carbon to crystallize into diamonds. The crystals would then sink deeper into the planet, creating a spectacular form of precipitation that never reaches a surface.

The new melting temperature estimates suggest that as those diamonds descend into increasingly hotter regions, they could eventually encounter conditions where the surrounding carbon becomes liquid. Because the liquid is denser, some solid diamond could theoretically remain suspended or float within it.

The result could be less like diamonds simply raining toward a planetary core and more like a strange, deep planetary ocean containing floating chunks of diamond. The latest experiment doesn't prove that diamond bergs are actually present inside Uranus or Neptune, but it gives planetary scientists a much stronger physical basis for modeling that possibility.

But how can diamond melt without burning? The answer is oxygen. Burning and melting are two entirely different processes. On Earth, a diamond heated to sufficiently high temperatures in the presence of oxygen can combust, reacting chemically with oxygen rather than turning into a puddle of liquid carbon.

Deep inside an ice giant planet, however, there is no ordinary atmosphere surrounding the diamond. Under tremendous pressure and extraordinary heat, the carbon crystal instead reaches the point where its tightly organized atomic structure can no longer remain solid. It changes phase and becomes liquid carbon.

Credit: Image by The Jeweler Blog using aichatapp.ai.

Forget metal detectors and drilling rigs. Some of the best clues about what lies beneath the earth’s surface are being delivered by creatures that weigh only a fraction of an ounce.



Termites are helping geologists search for buried gold and other valuable minerals by doing something they have been doing for millions of years: digging. In parts of Africa and Australia, these industrious insects can excavate deep into the ground in search of moisture and material for their nests. Depending on the species and environment, termites can reach surprisingly deep layers of soil and rock, sometimes tens of meters below the surface.



As they tunnel and build, termites bring particles from those deeper layers back to the surface and incorporate them into their mounds. The material can contain tiny chemical traces — a kind of underground fingerprint — associated with mineral deposits hidden below. To a termite, it is simply building material. To a geologist, it can be a valuable sample of what lies beneath.

That makes termite mounds a natural form of geological sampling. Exploration companies can collect small amounts of mound soil and have laboratories analyze its chemical composition. Elevated levels of gold or other elements can indicate that a potentially valuable mineralized zone lies somewhere beneath or nearby. Geologists can then use those clues to determine where expensive exploratory drilling and other machinery should be deployed.

The approach has been scientifically tested for more than a decade. Research by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) found elevated concentrations of gold in termite mounds above known gold deposits in Western Australia. The research showed that even relatively small mounds could provide useful clues about mineralization several meters underground.

More recent studies have broadened and strengthened the case. A 2023 study of "Macrotermes falciger" termite mounds in the Democratic Republic of Congo found that mound material reflected characteristics of the underlying geological formations and concentrated metals including copper, cobalt, nickel, lead and zinc in fine particles. The researchers concluded that termite mounds can provide useful information about subsurface geological anomalies for mineral exploration.

The method is appealing because it can help explorers narrow a search area before bringing in costly equipment. It also requires collecting samples from existing mounds rather than extensively disturbing the landscape.

It turns out that some of nature's best prospectors don't earn a paycheck and aren't required to wear a hard hat.

Credits: Fanciful image by The Jeweler Blog using aichatapp.ai. Termite mound photo by Oratile Leipego, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A diamond shape inspired by a woman’s lips makes for a great royal love story. But the woman at the center of the marquise-cut diamond’s origin story deserves far more than a footnote as King Louis XV’s mistress. Madame de Pompadour was one of the most influential women at the French court — and her relationship with the king continued to shape royal affairs long after their romance ended.



The legend of the marquise diamond dates to about 1745, when Louis XV supposedly commissioned his jeweler to create a diamond resembling the lips of Jean-Antoinette Poisson, the woman who would become the Marquise de Pompadour. The two reportedly met at a masked ball at Versailles, where the king was captivated by her beauty.



He soon made her his official chief mistress and, later that year, bestowed upon her the title Marquise de Pompadour. The elongated outline of the marquise-cut diamond was also known as the navette, or “little ship” in French, a reference to its boat-like silhouette.

The romantic relationship between Louis XV and Pompadour would last about five years, but for the next 14 years, until her death in 1764 at age 42, she retained his trust and became a powerful political confidante, court insider and influential patron of French culture.

She used her position to champion the arts and architecture. She supported artists including French painter François Boucher, helped establish the royal porcelain manufactory at Sèvres and encouraged projects that reflected the elegant Rococo style associated with the era.

She also supported Enlightenment thinkers and writers, helping make the royal court an important center of intellectual and artistic life. Her influence reached well beyond her personal relationship with Louis XV, making her one of the defining cultural figures of 18th-century France.

That legacy makes the marquise diamond’s origin story considerably deeper and more nuanced than a royal sweetheart inspiring a pretty gemstone shape.

And the shape itself remains distinctive nearly three centuries later. A modern marquise is an elongated brilliant-style diamond with curved sides and two pointed ends, typically featuring 58 facets. Its proportions and faceting have evolved considerably since the 18th century as cutters developed a better understanding of symmetry and light performance.

The shape offers a clever visual advantage, too. Because much of the diamond's weight is spread across its elongated outline, a marquise can appear larger face-up than a round diamond of the same carat weight. Its north-south orientation can also create the illusion of longer, more slender fingers.

Symmetry is especially important when choosing a marquise-cut diamond. Uneven curves or misaligned points can be obvious, while a pronounced “bow-tie” — a darker area across the center — can negatively affect its appearance. The pointed tips are also vulnerable to chipping, making protective settings, such as V-prongs, a smart choice.

Today, designers are giving the classic shape a fresh spin by setting marquise diamonds east-west, with the points extending across the finger. Celebrities have embraced both traditional and contemporary versions, including Victoria Beckham, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Portia de Rossi and Selena Gomez.

So while the marquise may have been born from a royal legend about a beautiful pair of lips, its enduring appeal owes something to a far more powerful legacy: the extraordinary woman whose name it carries.

Credits: Photo of 28.3-carat marquise-cut diamond by Chip Clark / Smithsonian and digitally enhanced by SquareMoose. Image of the Marquise de Pompadour by Charles André van Loo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.