Our stones

Every stone we set is moissanite. This page explains what that means, in more detail than the homepage has room for.

What moissanite is

Moissanite is silicon carbide. Diamond is carbon. They are two different minerals, and moissanite is not a version, a copy or a grade of diamond — it is its own gemstone with its own optical behaviour.

It was identified in 1893 by Henri Moissan, who was examining rock from a meteorite crater in Arizona and believed at first that he had found diamonds. He had not. The mineral was named after him.

Why it is grown

Natural moissanite exists in quantities too small to make jewellery from. What reaches the market is grown in a laboratory, under heat and pressure, over a period of weeks. This is not a shortcut or a substitute process — it is the only practical way this stone can exist at any scale.

One consequence is worth stating plainly: there is no mine behind it, and no question about where it came from.

How it behaves in light

Refractive index 2.65 – 2.69. Higher than diamond, which sits at 2.42. More light enters the stone and more of it returns to your eye.
Dispersion 0.104. Diamond is 0.044. Dispersion is the splitting of white light into colour — the flashes of rainbow you see when a stone moves. Moissanite does this at more than twice the rate.
Hardness 9.25 on the Mohs scale. Diamond is 10. In practice this means moissanite is hard enough for daily wear over a lifetime, and is not realistically scratched by anything you encounter in normal life.

Brilliance and fire are structural properties of the stone. They are not a coating and they do not wear off.

On diamond testers

Most handheld diamond testers measure how a stone conducts heat, and moissanite conducts heat much as diamond does. A tester that also measures electrical conductivity distinguishes the two immediately.

We mention this because we would rather you heard it from us. We do not describe our stones as diamonds and we do not want anyone buying from us under a misunderstanding.