Hearts and Arrows are a visual spectacle within certain diamonds. This pretty pattern was first recognised by the Japanese in the 1980’s using a viewing scope gadget. Viewing hearts and arrows (H & A) patterns in diamonds does not guarantee excellent or ideal symmetry. It is true that perfect hearts and arrows means that facets have been well aligned but there are many different shaped hearts and arrows, simply viewing this phenomenon isn’t proof of a well cut, well proportioned diamond. If the heart is split and not perfectly formed it fails and should the arrow shafts not align with the arrow heads then they too fail.
Very precise analysis is required to ascertain the perfect shape of the hearts and arrows and this must be performed under near microscopic conditions using the novel toy like ‘Hearts and Arrows Scope’. There are 8 hearts and 8 arrows, if any one of these 16 patterns does not perfectly align it is not true H & A.
Although nice to have there is a premium attached to the visual ‘bonus’; also note that once the diamond is set in a ring the hearts will no longer be visible for this reason if you are not a collector, investor or a connoisseur focus should be on the reported symmetry i. e. : Excellent/Ideal, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor. It’s interesting to note that any cubic zirconia (CZ) which is an artificial synthetic diamond bought for a few cents will almost always show H & A in fact we have marketing paper weights the size of tennis balls that show Hearts and Arrows so don’t be too taken in by this clever marketing visual.
So did GIA observation tests confirm that such diamonds look better?
Learn about the GIA view on Hearts and Arrows diamonds for the GIA viewpoint.This is a screen dump from the GIA website, the original article is found at https://www.gia.edu/