International Diamond Council Updates Rules for Diamond Grading

Photo above: Chairman of IDC- Stephane Fischler

This week the International Diamond Council (IDC) released an update of its “IDC rules for Grading Diamonds”.

According to IDC Chairman Stephane Fischler, the rules were incorporated after  industry-wide consultations   and discussion by the IDC board. Stephane said “It is essential that we keep our focus on bringing forward shared and transparent nomenclature, based on technological and other advances in the diamond industry in order to consolidate the trust of the consumer and help to maintain a stable market for diamonds.

Some of the changes made include the freedom for diamond grading laboratories to choose between one out of three terms to describe synthetic diamonds (laboratory created, laboratory grown and synthetic).

The recently updated rules can be downloaded from the website of the International Diamond Council.

In the early 1970’s there was an explosion in the number of private diamond grading  laboratories. Each of these labs had different grading systems. To cause more confusion to the already confused customer individual private labs said that their grading was better than their competitors.  This led to an international standardization of diamond grading.

The International Diamond Council (IDC) was established in May 1975. It was initially a joint committee established in the 18th World Diamond Congress between the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) and the International Diamond Manufacturers Association (IDMA). This joint committee was to standardize industry-wide, the grading of polished diamonds. The joint committee was later renamed the International Diamond Council (IDC).

The IDC mission includes:

1) Formulation of internationally recognized standards for diamond grading and nomenclature.

2) To encourage established institutes to apply these standards.

3) Normalization of working methods for applying these standards.

The current version in use of the “International Rules for Grading Polished Diamonds” was approved in 2008 by the WFDB and the IDMA.

IDC Website: New grading rules released

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