Native cut

Native cut is trade shorthand for a stone faceted near the source with weight kept ahead of symmetry. The signs are familiar. A bulging pavilion, a culet pushed off centre, a window at the heart of the face-up view, facets meeting where they land rather than where a diagram says they should. It is not a slur on the cutter. Rough is bought and sold by weight, and a cutter in Ratnapura or Chanthaburi who saves a fifth of a carat has done exactly what he was paid to do. The person left holding carats that add weight without adding colour is the buyer of the finished stone.

In practice

No laboratory writes native cut on a report. Cut appears only as shape and style, "cushion mixed cut" and the like, next to the measurements, and the measurements are where the story hides. A stone whose depth runs far past what its width would justify, or whose outline sits lopsided against its length and width, is telling you the pavilion bulges. Native-cut goods move through Bangkok, Colombo and Jaipur in quantity, and much of that trade exists because someone downstream intends to recut. Sapphire and ruby out of Sri Lanka and Madagascar show it most. The flat, weight-saving pavilions on Thai-cut garnet and tourmaline are cousins to it.

The dry truth is that a native cut is often a good buy at the right price and a poor one at the listed price. Two stones of the same weight and colour can face up a size apart. Ask what the stone would weigh after a competent recut, what that recut would cost, and whether the dealer has had it quoted. Then price the stone you will own, not the carats on today's invoice, and remember the old report dies with the recut.