Diamond cross

A hand-carved diamond crucifix drew all eyes at Basel’s famed jewellery fair.

Diamonds, besides being a girl’s best friend, are the hardest known material in nature. They can be cut along their facets and polished into a gem, but they cannot be broken or scratched, much less chiselled or carved like, say, stone or bronze. Which is what makes Mahendra U Shah’s “hand-carved crucifix diamond” so unique.

The crucifix was the pride of the Indian participation at Basselworld, the high profile annual fair of jewellery and watches in the Swiss border town which concluded this Thursday. Mounted on a white metal cross-shaped frame, the tiny sculpture (just 27.12 mm X 7.24 mm X 4.25 mm) in dark gray diamond was displayed under a magnifying glass at the “India Palace” in the main exhibition hall no. 2, the booth showcasing the highlights of the collection at the India pavilion in hall no. 6, some distance away.

“Mahendra Shah was a master diamond artisan. He was entirely self-taught. Taking inspiration from the sculptures in the derasars near Patan, where he was born, he carved the figure of the Jain deity Parsvanath. He also carved Ganesh and the Buddha,” says Shashikant Shah, consultant and advisor to K9 Jewells, the Mumbai-based company which owns the crucifix diamond. “Mahendrabhai was an inspired artist,” says Ramesh Patel, director, Ratnakala Exports, a leading manufacturer of small diamonds, echoing the sentiments of many in the diamond trade. “The crucifix was the last and most complex piece he created before his death in 2009,” says Shah. “It took him nine-and-a-half years to finish.”

K9 specialises in fancy shaped diamonds — a diya, a christmas tree, a horse head, and so on — some of which were on display in Basel. In fact, Samir Doshi, who owns K9 Jewells, claims that he was Shah’s only student and learnt the craft of carving diamonds from him. It was also he who had presented Shah with the large 175 carat black diamond from Congo sometime in 2000 to sculpt into any shape he pleased. But what about wastage, given that the finished piece weighs only 25 carat? “Yes, there is a lot of wastage. But to create something unique, you have to accept it. Besides, black diamond is not as expensive as white,” says Doshi.

What adds to Shah’s achievement is that he devised the tools of his craft himself, innovating on the usual hand-held tools of the diamond cutter for his purposes. “Taking a wooden crucifix as his model, he made minute calculations, taking 24.44 mm:1 mm as the conversion factor, for every detail, every curve,” says Shashikant Shah, showing the diamond carver’s neat jottings in Gujarati that have been reproduced in a recently published book on the diamond crucifix.

Doshi has also got the diamond crucifix certified by the Gemological Institute of America, the foremost international authority, as a “rare” and “unique” object. His plan is to present the crucifix to the pope. “But we would first like to create enough awareness, so the world knows about the uniqueness of the crucifix,” says Shah. The grand unveiling in Basel is meant to do just that.