A photo of a couple holding hands in a field with a sunset appearing in the back
Unmatched Sparkle, Brilliance, and Beauty

The journey that led you to the person you want to be with for the rest of your life was unique. And now it’s time to complete that journey by finding the perfect diamond that is just as incredible as the one it complements.

Introducing the Continental Diamond Legacy™ Collection

It's all in the name: Legacy. Because it's more than just a diamond. It’s a masterwork … an instant heirloom meant to bring joy to its caretaker and successive generations. It's skillfully crafted by a master diamond cutter cuts to standards that go well beyond the traditional definition of Excellent. 

Exacting attention to physical and optical precision, and adherence to the industry's tightest proportion targets, result in a symphony of white and colored light … what diamond connoisseurs call brilliance, dispersion, and scintillation.

For you, it simply means enduring beauty and allure. A Legacy diamond really will last — because its caretakers will treasure it and its legacy … forever.

The Zenith of Craftsmanship

The Legacy diamond is a study in cut proportion, precision, and consistency — the pinnacle of a master diamond cutter's art and the cornerstone of beauty. The result is a diamond that looks bigger and brighter than one of equivalent color, clarity, and carat weight.

Your Journey to the Perfect Diamond

Finding just the right diamond for any occasion is a journey — one that becomes a story. And everyone likes a story. You have a chance to weave one of your own around your diamond quest and your choice of a Legacy diamond.

You likely learned about carat weight, color, clarity, and cut at the start of your journey — the proverbial 4Cs. Many first-time diamond buyers start with carat size in mind. As their journey unfolds, however, they may make color, clarity, and cut tradeoffs to adhere to a budget figure. It's a perfectly sound approach — tried and true.

But, like the American poet Robert Frost, Continental Diamond encourages you to "take the road less traveled by" and focus primarily on cut. Prioritizing cut can make all the difference.

A diagram that shows a path leading with prioritizing the cut of a diamond will bring you to a sparkly & brighter diamond, while a path prioritizing carat only gives you a large diamond.
A closeup of a rough cut diamond held between two fingers
Refined Proportions

The Legacy diamond is cut to what is commonly called “ideal” proportions. Ideal is a term used by the American Gemological Society (AGS) wherein a round diamond's table, girdle, crown, and pavilion are cut to a mathematical formula.

That formula is expressed using the table size, girdle height, crown height, and pavilion depth as a percentage of the diamond’s total diameter. Alternatively, the crown and pavilion angles, expressed in degrees, can also denote an ideal cut.

The "ideal" cut, first described by Marcel Tolkowsky in 1919, excels in creating brilliance (white light reflected to the viewer), fire (dispersion), and sparkle (scintillation). Yet, even within ideal cut parameters, there is a range of acceptable proportions and angles — and this is where the Legacy diamond departs from all other ideal cut diamonds.

Continental Diamond believes cutting to a more defined portion of the total available target proportions delivers a more magnificent diamond than the “average” ideal cut diamond. Master cutters cutting to this much tighter target proportion consistently produce an even brighter and more beautiful diamond than one that may be equally graded.

A diagram showing the side profile of a diamond, and a top profile of a diamond with a list of how a legacy diamond is cut to exact standards
Precision Cutting 

The Legacy diamond gains additional light performance characteristics and an eye-pleasing cut pattern from both physical and optical symmetry — achieved through precision cutting.

Physical symmetry refers to the exactness of shape, overall outline, placement, intersection, and alignment of individual facets. It is sometimes referred to as "meet-point symmetry," wherein facet junctions meet equally.

A graphic showing how being precisely cut allows more light reflection and the hearts & arrows visual optical symmetry pattern

Optical symmetry (or 3-D symmetry) ensures that facets reflect perfectly with their counterparts on the opposite side of the diamond. Achieving optical symmetry is extremely difficult and time-consuming because it requires a high degree of cutting precision by a master cutter. One of the defining characteristics indicative of a high-precision diamond is its hearts and arrows pattern.

With the aid of a specialized optical tool, it is possible to see a clear pattern of eight unbroken, consistently defined arrows while looking down through the table of a Legacy diamond. The uniform, aesthetic quality of the arrows indicates the degree of precision achieved.

Similarly, it is possible to reverse the diamond in the optical tool to see a kaleidoscopic, uniform pattern of eight hearts from the bottom. The trueness of the hearts (without irregularities of shape, size, or gaps) denotes optical precision more than the arrow pattern because more facets are involved in their creation.

Superior physical and optical symmetry produce a more defined, uniform, consistent hearts and arrows pattern. And that pattern is indicative of the Legacy diamond’s level of craftsmanship.

The symmetry also enhances light performance in all environments with visible light, in harmony with the ideal proportions. The goal of the Legacy diamond cutter is to achieve overall maximum beauty via both, where brightness, scintillation, and dispersion work harmoniously.

The result? An enduring heirloom whose beauty and journey, from the selection of the rough crystal to the finished diamond, results in a treasure to be passed down through generations.

Cut determines the sparkle, brilliance, and beauty of a diamond

It is why Continental Diamond developed the Continental Diamond Legacy™ collection.

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