London-based jeweller Taylor & Hart has reached a milestone in the jewellery scene by crafting and delivering its first bespoke engagement ring set with a blockchain diamond.
According to the predominantly online jeweller, which has a showroom in London, this is the UK’s first engagement ring that has been digitally tracked with blockchain.
This means that the journey taken by the diamond from mine to consumer is tracked and available in a secured, unmodifiable and transparent manner.
Taylor & Hart teamed up with Everledger, a global emerging technology enterprise, to specially craft this engagement ring for a customer in the UK.
The milestone stemmed from an understanding of the increasing consumer demand for transparency coupled with the industry’s desire to illustrate authenticity, transparency and provenance.
Consumers have developed a keen interest in knowing the lifetime journey of their diamond and jewellery, which gives them the assurance that their purchase is ethically sourced and is sustainable.
As Taylor & Hart CEO Nikolay Piriankov explains, “Every touch point of the journey is logged, so that customers are fully assured there has been no data manipulation on their diamond. This gives them both peace of mind, but also a wonderful story and a view into the complex supply chain mined diamonds go through before being set into a piece of jewellery.”
As a pioneer of digital provenance, Everledger’s leading work in the use of emerging technology for real-world applications has been widely recognised in the diamond industry. Through authenticated provenance tracking from mine to end consumer, Everledger is enabling transparency across the global diamond supply chain. This provides conscientious consumers with the choices that they demand and deserve.
Taylor & Hart laid the groundwork for this innovative project by working closely with three diamond manufacturers in India (Dharmanandan, Star Rays and Hari Krishna), purchasing rough diamonds from countries including Russia, Canada and Botswana.
The customer the ring was for was already in the blockchain business and therefore had an awareness of Everledger’s work.
He states: “I was really excited about the concept of this ground-breaking new scheme; knowing the provenance of my stone was as important and interesting to me as the quality and design of the ring were.”
After choosing a hexagonal-shaped diamond from the selection of diamonds tracked by Everledger and purchased by Taylor & Hart, the customer was then provided with a digital record of every touchpoint of his diamond’s journey, before being presented with the finished engagement ring designed by Taylor & Hart.
This showed him not only the time, date and location of every step of the diamond’s journey, but even the artisans who cut and polished it as well as the grading certificate providing the diamond’s quality.
The use of blockchain for diamond provenance-tracking is highly significant as customers will have confidence there has been no tampering in the recording of the journey of their stone.
As Piriankov states, “Anything that is paper-based has a higher risk of data fraud. The digitally logged certificates provided by Everledger give a source of provenance to the client, thereby helping to eliminate concern that their diamond was in some way unethical.”
Additionally, as the ring continues to be worn through the years, customers will be able to track price movement of their diamond to see how the value is improving over time.
Whilst this is the first UK customer to have purchased a diamond tracked by Everledger; through Taylor & Hart, the jewellery brand is intent on pioneering this new way for diamonds to be exchanged; other luxury items including watches and jewellery are set to eventually also follow this method.
Piriankov explains: “The cost of this process is only a fraction higher than normal trade and offers us the same peace of mind it does for our customers. Eventually this will be how all diamonds are traded.”
