The Basic Principles Of wedding ring jewellery in Jewellery and Watches in South Africa

1-billion at the wholesale level in 1979, a practically hundredfold increase. Thanks mostly to the work of the now 86-year-old American investigative reporter, Edward Jay Epstein, this story of the reasonably recent development of the diamond ring as essential to the engagement ritual, is one that is easily accessible to all who might wonder how it became the supreme symbol of love and intent to marry, that a lot of us unquestioningly accept it to be.

In it, Epstein takes an in-depth appearance at how, upon the discovery of diamonds in South Africa, the British colonist investors behind the mines would go on to establish De Beers Consolidated Mines into a cartel that, over the course of the 20th century, basically developed a monopoly that fixed diamond costs and managed the worldwide market for diamonds.

This deliciously long read focuses in part on the development of the advertising technique that would take the ancient customized of using an engagement ring frequently and most dependably traced back to ancient Rome and turn it into a universal tradition. In Related Source Here that arguably still continues to be formed by marketing and popular media, that now nearly 40-year-old short article deserves revisiting; if not every year, then a minimum of every generation, not only since of Epstein's deep dive into the development of the modern-day engagement ring, but also as an insightful appearance at the early usage of a few of the advertising methods that take advantage of our requirement to belong, which continue to be utilized today.

According to the book,, "the custom of diamond engagement rings happened through Maximilian I, archduke of Austria (1459 1519), who offered a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy (1457 1482) in 1477." Over the following centuries, diamonds rings continued to grow in popularity and function on the digits of the aristocracy and the well-heeled.

That would alter with the late 19th-century discovery of diamonds in South Africa and the facility of De Beers Consolidated Mines. And that is not all that would alter. A number of historians and academics have argued that the discovery of diamond mines along with the gold mines, laid the ground for apartheid.