March 2023
At the beginning of March 2023, Jody Wainwright (Director of Precious Gemstones), Geordie Wainwright (sixth generation of the Boodles family and salesperson in the Bond Street showroom) and James Amos (Director of Marketing), travelled to South Africa to visit the Cullinan Mine, a mine where many of Boodles diamonds come from. Michael Wainwright (Managing Director) and Honour Wainwright (Head of Communications) also visited the mine in March 2022.
Highlights of the trip included an incredible journey 1km underground to see the mine, various meetings with Petra to develop Boodles partnership and discussing ways to secure more diamonds from the Cullinan Mine, and working out how Boodles can continue to expand offering charitable support to the region.
With so many socioeconomic issues in the area, such as an employment rate of 35% in the area, lack of healthcare, limited access to clean water, it is difficult to know in which area Boodles support would be most useful. The decision was made to invest prominently in the region’s education to give its people the best possible opportunity of learning new skills which in turn would allow other businesses to grow, offering more opportunities outside of the mine and creating more jobs further down the line.
In addition to this, Boodles sponsors a programme in two schools which funds 10 students through their final year of school and into university, who otherwise might not have been able to afford further education. Boodles have also committed to providing sanitary packs for girls to give them the confidence to always attend school.
The owners of the Cullinan mine, Petra, are dedicated to looking after the workers and families of the mine through infrastructure projects such as hospitals, schools and roads. But it is the business itself which is the solution to many of the problems in the region. Working across a network of other large businesses across the whole of the province they aim to educate, train, support and finance local businesses to create jobs and enable growth. Reduction in energy consumption was also of paramount importance, their waste management solutions are second to none and the mine is responsible for 2,700 hectares of protected conservation land around it.
The trip exemplified to the Boodles team the work Petra does in the community. Petra explained their strategy when it comes to ensuring their mines are a force for good in the local community, from an environmental, financial and social point of view, with the key takeaway being the focus on making the community around the Cullinan mines, and making them self-sustainable even after the mine ceases to exist.
Petra places great importance on their mission statement: "Abundance from rarity". It can be applied most obviously to the diamonds, but it can also be applied to the future prospects of the region around Cullinan.
How does a diamond find its way from the depths of the Cullinan Mine to you? It all begins with a ‘eureka’ moment: a sparkle is spotted amid the rock dust; a flash of fire, shimmering in the dark. The team in South Africa know what we are looking for: high colour, high purity ‘roughs’. A deal is done, and the stone is on its way to us. Once in London, the rough diamonds are laser-mapped using technology that would have been inconceivable for the man who cut the 3,106 carat diamond from the Cullinan Mine in 1908. (So stressful was the first cleaving, that after three months of planning, Mr Asscher is said to have fainted on completing his task.) As a diamond lover, you’ve probably heard of the ‘four C’s’ – cut, colour, clarity and carat. At Boodles, we like to add a fifth: Clive. Clive is our master diamond cutter, and responsible for helping our Director of Precious Gemstones, Jody Wainwright, create some of our most beautiful diamonds. It’s Clive’s expert eye – and guiding hand – that guarantees a diamond’s perfect finish, as he has done with many of the world’s most famous diamonds over these last four decades.
His bench is where the shape is ‘blocked out’. Facets are angled for maximum refraction and fire, with a microscopic eye always on purity. The term ‘polishing’ does Clive’s work an injustice; few realise it can take months to polish some Boodles diamonds. It’s not unheard of for him to spend a full day polishing an important diamond’s ‘table’ (the top facet of the diamond) alone. After a quick trip to New York and back for GIA certification, the finished diamond is in London once more, to be placed in its setting. (The work of our design team merits a book of its own!) And finally, it’s over to you, in these pages. Which is of course where the next chapter – and your own story – begins.
