Damascus · Syria
Light, held still.
Fine jewellery set with laboratory-grown moissanite — the stone that returns more light, and more colour, than a diamond of the same size.
01 — About
Carat co.
Carat co. is a jewellery house in Damascus, working in laboratory-created stones. Every piece here is built around moissanite — chosen not as a stand-in for anything else, but because on the figures that decide how a stone behaves in light it is the strongest of them.
Rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings, cut and set to be worn rather than kept in a box. The collection is shown here, not sold here — pieces are discussed directly, and the quickest way to reach us is Instagram.
02 — The stone
Moissanite.
Silicon carbide. Grown, never mined.
Moissanite was found in 1893, in the rim of a meteorite crater in Arizona, by the chemist Henri Moissan. Natural crystals are so rare that no one has ever cut a serious gemstone from one. Every stone we set is grown instead — silicon carbide, brought up under heat and pressure over months, then cut by hand.
It is not an imitation of anything. Moissanite is a gemstone in its own right, with its own optical character, and on the three numbers that decide how a stone behaves in light it is the strongest laboratory stone you can buy.
03 — Measured
Three numbers,
against a diamond.
-
Brilliance
2.65
Refractive index
Diamond2.42 Moissanite2.65A higher index bends light harder and sends more of it back out of the crown. It is why the stone reads brighter across a room, not only under a lamp.
-
Fire
0.104
Dispersion
Diamond0.044 Moissanite0.104Dispersion is the split of white light into colour. At two and a half times the figure for diamond, this is the flash people notice before they notice anything else.
-
Hardness
9.25
Mohs scale
Moissanite9.25 Diamond10The one figure diamond keeps. Second hardest of anything you can set, above sapphire at 9 — which in practice means a stone that is worn daily and does not dull.
04 — Why moissanite
The best stone
a laboratory makes.
Lab-grown diamond, white sapphire, cubic zirconia, moissanite. Of everything created rather than dug, moissanite is the one that returns the most light for what you spend — and the only one that beats a diamond at anything.
| Property | Moissanite | Lab diamond | White sapphire | Cubic zirconia |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brilliance refractive index | 2.65 | 2.42 | 1.77 | 2.16 |
| Fire dispersion | 0.104 | 0.044 | 0.018 | 0.060 |
| Hardness Mohs | 9.25 | 10 | 9 | 8.25 |
Only diamond resists a scratch better. Nothing created bends light harder, and nothing throws more colour — which is the part you actually see.
05 — Four categories
06 — The pieces
Imagery is provisional line art, marked SAMPLE, standing in until the photography is shot. This is a showcase — nothing here is for sale online.