Make — The Trade Term for Cut Quality
Make — The Trade Term for Cut Quality
The dealer-and-cutter shorthand for the proportions, symmetry, and polish that determine optical performance
In the gemstone trade, make is the conventional dealer-and-cutter shorthand for the overall quality of a stone's cutting — the combination of proportions, symmetry, polish, and finish that together determine the stone's optical performance. A stone with good make has been cut to proportions that maximise light return, with symmetrical facet placement, clean polish, and an absence of cutting defects; a stone with poor make has been cut for weight retention rather than optical performance, with consequences in the brilliance, fire, and visual appeal of the finished gem. The term applies across both diamond and coloured-stone cutting, with somewhat different evaluation criteria in each category.
The components of make
The principal components of make are proportions (the depth of the stone relative to its diameter, the size and angle of the crown, the size and angle of the pavilion, the table size, the girdle thickness), symmetry (the regular placement and angular relationship of the facets to one another and to the centre of the stone), and polish (the surface quality of the individual facets). The combination of these components determines how light enters the stone, refracts through the body, reflects from the pavilion facets, and returns to the viewer's eye.
A well-made stone returns the maximum proportion of incident light to the viewer through the table and the crown facets, producing the brilliance (the white-light return), fire (the spectral colour produced by dispersion), and scintillation (the rapid sparkle produced by the alternation of light and dark facets) that define the optical performance of a faceted gem. A poorly made stone, with deep pavilions that allow light leakage through the bottom, shallow proportions that allow light to escape through the back, or asymmetric facet placement that disrupts the orderly progression of light through the stone, returns less light to the viewer and shows correspondingly diminished optical performance.
The diamond context
For diamonds, the make has been formalised into the cut grade — the GIA cut grade scale of Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, and Poor that has been the international standard for diamond cut evaluation since GIA's introduction of the scale for round brilliant diamonds in 2006 and its extension to fancy shapes in subsequent years. The cut grade evaluates the proportions, symmetry, and polish of the diamond against reference standards developed from extensive optical performance research and reduces the assessment to a single grade that the trade can use as a working evaluation.
The trade nonetheless continues to use the informal term make alongside the formal cut grade, particularly in dealer-to-dealer conversation and in the description of stones that fall outside the GIA cut-grade framework (older cuts, unusual fancy shapes, antique stones). The dealer's good make assessment overlaps substantially with the GIA Excellent or Very Good cut grade for round brilliants but applies more broadly across stones for which formal cut grading is not available or appropriate.
The coloured-stone context
For coloured stones, the formal cut grading is less developed than for diamonds. GIA does not issue a formal cut grade for coloured stones (in contrast to its colour and clarity grading), and the principal coloured-stone laboratories typically describe the cut in narrative terms rather than reducing it to a graded scale. The trade therefore relies more heavily on the informal make assessment in coloured-stone evaluation, with experienced dealers and cutters making working judgments about the quality of the cutting based on the proportions, symmetry, and polish observed.
The criteria for good make in coloured stones differ somewhat from those in diamonds because the priorities of coloured-stone cutting differ. For coloured stones, the cutter is balancing weight retention (which directly affects the value of the finished stone, since price-per-carat scales with size), colour saturation (which depends on the orientation of the stone relative to the rough's colour zoning and the optical path through the body), brilliance (which depends on the proportions and finish), and the prevailing market preference for the species (some species are conventionally cut to accept somewhat deeper pavilions to maintain colour saturation).
The weight-retention trade-off
One of the persistent tensions in gem cutting is the trade-off between weight retention and optical performance. Cutting a stone to optimal proportions for light return typically requires the cutter to remove more material than would be required for a less optimal cut that retains more weight. The economic incentive — particularly for stones near the price-jump boundaries (one carat, two carats, five carats, ten carats) where per-carat pricing steps upward — is to retain weight even at the cost of optical performance.
The result is a continuing supply of commercial stones cut for weight retention rather than optical performance — diamonds with deep pavilions and small tables that retain weight but show diminished brilliance, coloured stones with similar weight-driven proportions. The trade distinguishes carefully between weight-retention cutting and optical-performance cutting in the dealer's make assessment, with the price implications running in opposite directions: weight-retention stones command higher per-carat prices for their size but lower per-carat prices for their cut quality; optical-performance stones command higher per-carat prices for their cut quality but represent a lower carat weight from the original rough.
In the trade
For the trade, make is one of the central evaluative categories in stone selection. Dealers and cutters use the term to convey a working assessment of cut quality that informs purchasing, valuation, and resale decisions. The combination of the formal cut grading (where available) and the informal make assessment provides the framework within which cut quality is evaluated and traded. For coloured stones in particular, the dealer's experienced make assessment remains one of the most important inputs into the working valuation of a stone.