The World Federation of Diamond Bourses president Ernie Blom today put out a much-welcome open letter on diamond grading, which makes a firm statement about what constitutes acceptable behavior as far as choosing grading labs:
Blom is calling a meeting of industry labs to chart a way forward.
Here is what I would like the WFDB and other industry groups — including the Gemological Institute of America, which needs to stop being silent on this issue — to endorse:
– The GIA color and clarity scale is currently the internationally recognized standard for diamond grading, and all labs should tailor their grading to it. (We’ll leave cut aside for now.)
– The industry should move to have the GIA grading scale officially endorsed by the International Organization for Standardization and CIBJO.
– To help ensure consistency, GIA should provide a set of its official master stones to any diamond lab that requests it.
