Many thanks to the blog readers for putting me onto the work of jewelry designer Todd Reed.

Todd’s designs use ethically sourced diamonds and recycled gold, but his use of raw diamonds sets these rings apart.

Ring using cut and polished diamonds and raw diamond cubes. Courtesy of Todd Reed.

Before diamonds are cut and polished, they arrive in a rough shapes, including cubes and octohedrons. These rough diamonds capture the idea of nature and earth as the most perfect form, and challenge the idea of perfection.

It started as a way to question society about the idea of perceived value. In particular how value and perceived value relate to ideas of beauty or perfection that have become norms of society.

There are certain ad campaigns, such as, “She’ll like you at a half carat, but she’ll love you at a carat.”, that prompted me to make this line of jewelry. This would be a line of jewelry that really did use the most perfect diamond in the world, the actual raw diamond. Uncut. Unpolished. Natural, perfect geometry.

As the popularity of the “bling” look fades, the natural look is rising in popularity. And a raw diamond ring creates great interest: “My wife’s rings stop people in their tracks.” (from BluePlanetWedding.com’s blog comments - thanks Joe!).

Check out Todd’s pages: www.toddreed.com and at Altered Space Gallery.