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Rhapsodies in Blue, Pink, Purple, Red—and Brown: An Appreciation of the Argyle Tenders

When in 1983 fabulous purplish-pink diamonds from Rio Tinto Zinc’s Argyle Mine in Western Australia started trickling on to the market, few realized that the company would make popularization of fancy color diamonds one of its main missions. The success of that mission has written a new, momentous entirely unexpected chapter of diamond history.

By David Federman, Editor-in-Chief

Two views of a glorious purple-pink Argyle diamond set in a ring. Photo courtesy of Linney’s, Perth, Australia

Marketing is a form of cultural alchemy that, in the case of gems, transforms trinkets into treasures and despised goods into prized possessions. If you, like me, subscribe to this definition and are looking for a case history, look no farther than Western Australia’s mammoth Argyle Diamond Mine.

Linney's, an upscale jeweler in Perth, Australia, frequently uses large deep-toned Argyle cognac-brown diamonds as center stones in its rings.

Brown is beautiful: From tool stone to gem
Since 1985, when the mine began to unearth tens of millions of carats a year, as well as hold sales of its top colors, the company has taken both a top-down and bottom-up approach to fostering demand for its peculiar output. You see, 50% of Argyle’s production is brown in color. So until the company was faced with the daunting task of changing attitudes to brown diamonds from hostile to friendly, these stones were at the bottom of every color-preference list. Indeed, most were used for industrial purposes.

There was, of course, ample economic motivation for making brown diamonds desirable for jewelry. As gems, rather than junk, these stones became far more valuable. So Argyle engaged in classic image-marketing, naming the best of its browns “champagne diamonds,” giving them a seven-grade color-intensity scale, and selling them in terms of lightness and darkness on that scale. By doing so, they created the first viable mass market for colored diamond jewelry. Diamonds were no longer a colorless stone but a full-fledged colored stone. This shift, or expansion, of basic identity has allowed the diamond, just like the cultured pearl, to enlarge its reputation from being mainly a white stone to a colored stone as well. Purists might not like this, but booming sales of treated natural and man-made yellow diamonds prove diamonds are now thought of in ways increasingly similar to, say, corundum.

In the pink: golden needles in a haystack
Besides a rich bestowal of fancy-brown diamonds, the gods blessed Argyle with a bounty—albeit one far more miserly—of pink, purple and reddish diamonds. To give its name the cachet of South Africa’s Premier Mine—famous for fancy blue diamonds—Argyle started holding sales of select pinks to establish its reputation among collectors and connoisseurs.

This spectacular ring from Linney's, Perth, Australia, features a large, light hydrangea-pink center stone diamond surrounded by full-bodied pink melee from Argyle.

I can still remember an early 1980s cover of GIA’s Gems & Gemology that featured an array of distinctive pink diamonds owned by Ralph Esmerian, one of New York’s most esteemed gem dealers. When I interviewed him about these diamonds, he told me that their colors were unlike any ever seen and that he felt it an obligation as a fine gem dealer to be among the first to offer them. If a man of Esmerian’s caliber and taste felt it a matter of noblesse oblige to carry Argyle’s pinks, that was automatic elevation of them to the most rarefied ranks of gem beauty. That Gems & Gemology cover was the first of many marketing coups for Argyle. A sale of Argyle pinks at Christie’s added to their mystique.

By the end of the decade, Argyle had instituted annual private auctions (called “Tenders”) of its best pinks and purples. The first of these in 1985, at which a mere 33 stones weighing just over 18 carats were offered, caused an international sensation. Since then, these highly-publicized events have earned Argyle and its pinks a kind of stature reserved for Burma and its rubies. This celebrity, in turn, has vastly improved the reputation of fancy color diamonds and stoked the fires of demand all around the world for these rarities. Indeed, it is doubtful that the market for colored diamonds would have ripened as quickly and as fully as it did if Argyle hadn’t established itself as a standard bearer for colored diamond beauty.

Brown is beautiful, especially when set in contrast with white diamonds--an esthetic principle Argyle taught the world as part of its popularization campaign for champagne diamonds.

The summing up
The Argyle tender is now a diamond market institution with enough importance to influence the very history they keep making. This year, for instance, Argyle held two sales—one a first-ever auction of its unique violet-blue diamonds that was accompanied by a ground-breaking G&G article on these wonders unique to Australia. Indeed, Argyle is the only known producer of a bona fide violet diamonds—and is singly responsible for the addition of this color to the diamond spectrum.

At first glance, this haunting diamond looks blue; on closer inspection, however, it begin to hum with a purple overtone that is a distinct, exclusive characteristic of Argyle violet diamonds.

In all, Argyle has auctioned 1,168 stones weighing 1,207.01 carats. The largest pink offered so far weighed 4.15 carats and was offered at the 2001 sale. Every year, Argyle regulars scout its previews looking for majestic purples, punchy pinks and, the rarest of all rarities, the elusive red stone. There’s a story about one of the very few of them elsewhere in this issue of GemMail. But, for now, Argyle’s tenders continue to play a vital role as publicity magnet for the gemological cause célèbre of fancy color diamonds.

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