Local minds craft diamond designs at ROM

Local minds craft diamond designs at ROM. Toronto award winning designer Dieter Huebner looks at "The Milky Way", a piece he created which is featured in The Nature of Diamonds exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum. The piece includes 2000 diamonds and weighs 67.96 carats. Photo/ANICE WONG

Two Canadian jewelry designers, both from Etobicoke, are featured in the Royal Ontario Museum's new The Nature of Diamonds exhibit.

Niki Kavakonis' Tip of the Iceberg ring was created in 2007 and features a natural, uncut 2.78-carat octahedral diamond from the Northwest Territories' Ekati mine.

Kavakonis, a writer and a jeweller, attended Sheridan College and studied art and architectural history at the doctoral level at the University of Toronto.

She was invited by the ROM to participate in the show.

"For an independent designer like myself there's no words to express what it's like to be in this kind of exhibition," said Kavakonis, who attended the Oct. 22 media preview of the exhibit.

"The whole thing has just been an amazing experience and it's just starting."

Kavakonis, whose father sculpted the doors of St. Anne's Church in Parkdale, said that she's extremely honoured to count her work among pieces from such major houses as Cartier and Tiffany and Co.

Kavakonis is a past-president of Metal Arts Guild of Canada and has edited its publication, MAGazine. She's also curated various exhibits and has been invited to speak about the craft on many occasions.

Etobian Dieter Huebner's award-winning The Milky Way collar necklace is also featured in The Nature of Diamonds.

Huebner's stunning piece, which features 2,000 diamonds (67.96 carats) suspended in a platinum grid, is one of the featured works in the exhibit's stainless steel gem vault.

The piece weighs about three-quarters of a kilogram and was designed for Vancouver's Brinkhaus Jewellers. It is also the winner of the 2000 De Beers Diamonds International Award.

"My inspiration was the Milky Way and a spider web with the dew drops on it," said Huebner, who was also at the show's Oct. 22 sneak peek.

"It was my salute to the millennium."

Huebner, a native of Germany, said that's it's a real thrill to have his piece beloved back in Canada.

"It's a real honour. It's like meeting new friends again," said Huebner, who taught gold-and silver-smithing at Humber College.

The Nature of Diamonds, which is located in the ROM's Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall, officially opened to the public on Saturday, Oct. 25.

The stunning collection of diamonds and gemstones features about 500 brilliant pieces on loan from other major museums and private collections. Several major design houses also loaned pieces for the exhibit.

The ROM's presenting sponsor is DeBeers Canada, while the show's curator is Dr. Kim Tait, the associate curator of mineralogy for the ROM's natural history department.

New York's American Museum of Natural History in collaboration with the ROM, the Houston Museum of Natural Science and Chicago's Field Museum, organized the exhibit. At this point, the ROM is the only Canadian venue set to host the exhibition during its North American Tour.

One of the highlights of the collection is the exquisite Incomparable Diamond, a 407-carat golden-coloured kite-shaped diamond.

This stunning gem, the third largest cut diamond ever recorded, is carefully displayed as the central piece in the collection's stainless steel gem vault. The precious stone, which had a total weight of 890-carats prior to being cut into 14 satellite pieces, was discovered in the early 1980s by a young girl in the Congo. The Incomparable Diamond is also the largest flawless diamond graded by the Gemological Institute of America.

Some of the collection's other unique pieces include a 2.15-carat chameleon stone, which changes from olive-green to yellow if heated or left in the dark for a long period of time.

The renowned Oppenheimer Diamond, a 253-carat octahedral-shaped diamond, is also featured in the show. This large pale yellow diamond honours Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, DeBeers' chair of the board from 1929 to 1957.

There's also the award-wining Mirage World Peace Egg, a stunning 1,030-diamond creation by Toronto's Mirage Creations Inc.

The exhibition includes seven sections to help people learn more about how diamonds are formed, their role in telling about the earth's geological history, their cuts as well as their cultural and historical significance.

Additionally, the ROM has produced a video called Crystal Clear: Diamonds from Canada's North, which explores the fairly recent discovery of Canadian diamonds. The film also looks at past, present and future mines in Canada.

The Nature of Diamonds runs until Sunday, March 22, 2009. The Garfield West Exhibition Hall is located on Level B2 of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Visit www.rom.on.ca for a full schedule of exhibits and related-activities at the ROM.