Three generations, one craft

Before me, a great-uncle was already crossing the seas to Indonesia, at the turn of the 20th century, to buy natural diamonds on behalf of a Dutch trading house, the beginning of a family tradition in the rough diamond trade that has never stopped.

My grandfather, born in Turkey and raised in France, traded with Italian, Turkish, Persian and Middle Eastern clients. He specialised in antique cuts, particularly the rose cut, a highly sought-after cut in his time, now rare and prized by collectors.

In Antwerp, my father and his brothers specialised in cleaving, the old technique of splitting a rough diamond along its natural growth line to prepare it for cutting, before sawing became the dominant method. Later, my father focused on selling rough stones from the former Zaire (under Mobutu), an operation run on the ground by one of his brothers. An uncle, meanwhile, served as president of the Israel Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan, the world's largest diamond bourse.

I earned my HRD Certified Diamond Grader certification in Antwerp in 1996, then trained in diamond cutting at the Harry Oppenheimer Diamond Training School in Johannesburg in 1997. Early in my career, I helped organise the sales of MIBA's production, the former Zaire's state mining company, a first immersion in conflict-free rough diamond sourcing before heading to the field myself.

From 1998 to 2019, I worked directly in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo as a rough diamond buyer, then as operations and purchasing manager. I established buying stations across several provinces, trained and managed teams on the ground, and evaluated full mining productions for Sodiam in Angola. I specialised in natural fancy coloured diamonds of Angolan and Congolese origin, stones of fully traceable provenance, and in 2006 conducted several evaluation missions connected to Laurelton Diamonds, the diamond-sourcing arm of Tiffany & Co. Angola and the DRC together represent some of the world's most significant sources of natural fancy colour diamonds.

Three generations, one craft, mine continues today in Paris, by private appointment.