There are countless famous diamonds, yet remarkably few cuts have achieved the same status as the coveted ASHOKA®. Instantly recognisable by its elongated silhouette, the patented 62-facet cut has become one of the most distinctive signatures in contemporary jewellery, admired for its beauty and for the extraordinary precision required to bring it to life.
Yet the diamond that inspired it has not been seen for almost forty years. In 1988, at Sotheby’s in St Moritz, a 41.37-carat Golconda stone named for Ashoka, the third-century BC Indian emperor remembered for trading conquest for compassion, sold to an anonymous bidder for a then-record price and disappeared from public view. Its geometry, however, refused to vanish with it.
New York diamantaire William Goldberg spent the better part of a decade studying the stone’s proportions before patenting his interpretation in 1999, arranging its facets to achieve what traditional step cuts rarely manage: a diamond that appears noticeably larger than an emerald cut of comparable carat weight while returning light with unusual vitality. Goldberg’s house still holds the exclusive rights to produce it, and fewer than one per cent of the world’s rough diamonds possess the natural length the cut demands.
That brilliance carries into every piece of jewellery. Whether it’s set in a graduated necklace, along a line of earrings or anchoring a solitaire, the ASHOKA® becomes the defining element of the piece, drawing the eye before any surrounding design has a chance to. A strand of matched stones demands dozens of these rare alignments, each stone chosen to sit in proportion with its neighbours, a feat of selection that can absorb years before setting even begins. The cut does not decorate a piece of jewellery so much as define it.
The ASHOKA® proposes that beauty is decided through proportion, restraint and craftsmanship long before a diamond meets its setting. ASHOKA ® diamonds are available exclusively at Partridge in New Zealand.
