Baguette Diamonds

The very word baguette has a very long and interesting history behind it. It’s actually a French word which means ‘long rod’. However the French word is itself derived from a Latin word baculum which means ‘a stick’. So the baguette can mean a cut resembling a long rod or a stick. Take your pick! The baguette cut grabbed the attention of many during the 20s when people were under the influence of the Bauhaus movement and preferred geometric designs in fashion and architecture. The baguette cut is similar to other cuts such as the emerald cut with its clean rectangular shape and square corners and step cut. The baguette diamonds are primarily used as side diamonds.

Historically speaking

The baguette diamonds owe their huge popularity to the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements of the early 20s. This cut was accepted widely during this period because of its simple rectangular shape that gelled well with the prevailing taste and trend. Owing to their rectangular shape and clean cuts, jewelers and designers were inspired to use these stones as side stones or accent stones and designed pieces that used a large number of baguette stones around a single centerpiece.

Some useful facts

The baguette diamonds are usually sold in smaller sizes and are hence measured not in terms of their carat weight but their dimension in millimeters and are usually characterized by length to width ration of around 1.5. The baguette cut also has less number of faces which at around 14 is considerably less than other cuts such as the emerald cut. The stone used for baguette cut should be of impeccable quality since the clean geometric cuts of baguette can expose even the tiniest flaws of the diamond.

As mentioned earlier, baguette diamonds are more often than not used as side stones or accent stones to accent the beauty of a single larger stone used as the centerpiece. The baguette diamonds serve the purpose of hiding the shoulders and joints of the centerpiece. Since the baguette cut diamonds are of uniform shape and size, these can be easily set in a piece either side by side or end to end without leaving any gap. This makes the setting of the whole piece a lot easier and also allows the jeweler to experiment more easily with the designs. A large number of baguette diamonds in a single piece create a magical effect of light and colors and really augment the beauty of the centerpiece.