Diamonds are mostly discovered in one of the following locations:
Africa: Angola, Botswana, Central African Republic, Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe.
Asia: China, India, Indonesia, Russia.
North & South America: Brasil, Canada, French Guiana, USA, Venezuela.
Once recovered and sorted, rough diamonds are sent to the diamond cutting centers.
Diamond cutting is the art, skill and science of changing a rough diamond into a faceted diamond. It requires specialized knowledge, tools and techniques because of its extreme hardness.
Following this highly specialized polishing process, and prior to the final mounting into jewelry, the vast majority of stones are submitted to grading laboratories such as IGI, HRD, GIA in order to assess their quality.