days
of the city's misfortune and decadence, it was transferred with others
to Antwerp. It flourished there until the Duke of Parma took the city
in 1585. This was the ruin of Antwerp. Her commerce declined; her
inhabitants were scattered, and the Dutch, profiting by her
misfortunes, did what they could to prevent her recovery. Diamond
cutting was driven largely with other industries to Amsterdam, which
has since become the chief center of the industry. The cutters of
Antwerp nevertheless maintained a good reputation, and some of the
Crown jewels of France were cut there during the eighteenth century.
With Napoleon in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the fortunes
of the city began to mend, and the diamond-cutting industry there
improved, until the beginning of the twentieth century found it more
flourishing than in the former palmy days.
There
were 75 diamond cutters in Paris in 1700, but most of them were driven
later by political troubles to Antwerp, and comparatively little
cutting has been done there since.
Diamond
cutting as an industry of importance in Amsterdam was founded by
Jewish cutters from Lisbon. Their forefathers are said to have come
originally from Alexandria. In Lisbon they brought the art to a high
state of perfection for those days, but religious persecution, by
driving them out of that city in the latter part of the sixteenth
century, transferred the industry to Holland.
In
the first step toward our modern cut brilliant, the paramount idea of
the cutter was, to polish the surface of the crystal with a loss of
weight only that was necessary to secure a smooth surface. To get more
of the re-
