From Ashes to Diamonds
How a niche jewellery brand turns your loved ones into eternal precisous stones
"A girl's best friend is meant to be a diamond. They might possibly be her grandma, mother, or father at this point.
Cremated human remains are compressed into diamonds by the Swiss business Algordanza under extreme heat and pressure that simulate circumstances found deep inside the Earth.
The idea, according to the company's founder and CEO Rinaldo Willy, was developed ten years ago. His clientele now comes from 24 different nations since that time.
The hospital receives between 800 and 900 human remains each year. They emerge as diamonds around three months later, where they can be kept in a box or used to make jewelry.
Willy claims that the majority of the stones turn blue because boron, an element that may be important in bone production, is found in trace levels in the human body. Willy is unsure of why, but occasionally a white, yellow, or nearly black diamond appears. Nevertheless, he claims, ""Each diamond is slightly unique from person to person. Always a special jewel.""
Although some people make plans for themselves to become diamonds after they pass away, the majority of the orders Algordanza receives are from the families of the recently deceased. Willy claims that roughly 25% of his clients are Japanese.
The family is always relieved that their loved one has, in a sense, come home, he claims. And even in brilliant condition.
The procedure costs between $5,000 to $22,000, which is comparable to some funeral charges. Similar technology and procedures are used in a lab to create synthetic diamonds from other carbon-based compounds.
The fundamental procedure transforms the ash into carbon before squeezing it into a machine for weeks of tremendous heat and pressure. That is at least a few hundred million years quicker than the time it takes for diamonds to form naturally.
The technique gets better with more time because the rough diamond starts to grow larger. The crystal is ground, cut to shape, and occasionally laser-engraved once the fresh diamond has cooled. Only around a pound of ashes are required to create a single diamond. His business has turned one person's ashes into up to nine diamonds.
The afterlife isn't only being blinged out by Algordanza, either. The same services are provided by an American business named LifeGem, and other U.S. patents for related techniques exist.
The majority of the time, people take the diamonds to a jeweler to have them turned into rings or pendants.
Willy personally delivers the gems to his Swiss clients. ""I don't know why, but if the diamond is blue, and the deceased also had blue eyes, I hear virtually every time that the diamond had the same hue as the eyes of the deceased,"" he adds."