The diamond world lost a master diamantaire last month with the passing of Antonio “Nino” Bianco.

Bianco died in New York on 15th June.  He was born at Christmas in 1951 in Johannesburg to parents from Italy. His father cut semi-precious stones and an elder brother also cut diamonds, but Nino was the star – the master diamond cutter who was entrusted with some of the world’s most exceptional and precious diamonds.

He was described as a “Stradivari of stones” by colleagues, but he worked far away from the glare of publicity that in a less secretive trade his skills would have attracted and deserved.  He would take months – even a year or more – to study the rough stone carefully and then cut each facet perfectly to maximise the exquisite beauty (and value) of the final polished diamond.

Bianco started out by helping his father when he was just 11 years old and began his formal training as a diamond cutter when he was 18.  In 1976 he moved to the United States where he subsequently established a workshop on West 47th Street in Manhattan’s diamond district.

He worked alone for much of his career but in 2002 he was persuaded to join Safdico, a major international diamond cutting and dealing business based in South Africa (and a customer of De Beers).

Bianco was one of a handful of diamond cutters entrusted to cut diamonds that would yield polished stones of 100 carats or more, including the Flame diamond, a stone that weighed 169 carats in the rough but was expertly finished at 100.009 carats – within the tiniest whisker of dropping below the magical 100 carat threshold.

The Flame diamond is described by Safdico as “a very important and rare 100 carat D colour Internally Flawless Pearshape” and images of the rough diamond and the exceptionally beautiful polished diamond can be seen on Safdico’s website here.

Nino Bianco was also the cutter behind other Safdico diamonds such as the 27.92 carat intense pink Princess Rose pear-shaped diamond and the 100 carat vivid yellow ‘cushion cut’ Dream Diamond, which moved ‘King of Diamonds’ Laurence Graff to declare, “I was mesmerized… it was an intense golden yellow and one of the rarest yellow diamonds I had ever seen. I knew the polished stone within would be more than exceptional“.

Bianco was also the cutter behind a second 100+ carat vivid yellow cushion cut diamond named The Golden Star.

Another exceptional diamond cut by Bianco was much smaller at 5.00 carats but it is special because of its colour: fancy vivid pink.  This exceptionally rare and internally flawless diamond was named The Rose diamond and is pictured here.

Nino Bianco – master diamond cutter – is survived by his wife and four children, and by some of the world’s most precious and beautiful diamonds which will forever bear testament to his supreme artistry.