UPDATE 27/02/2002 - AFTER WE POSTED THIS ARTICLE AND A SERIES OF TWEETS TAYLOR AND HART MOVED SWIFTLY TO REMOVE ALL RUSSIAN DIAMONDS ON THEIR WEBSITE. WHILST WHAT WE POSTED WAS ACCURATE AT THE TIME THIS POST, I THINK THIS ARTICLE PAINTS THEM IN A MUCH HARSHER LIGHT THAN THEY DESERVE.

I do not believe that they intentionally tried to hide the origin of their diamonds and it’s only because of their transparency that we were able to quickly identify Russian diamonds atall.

Yesterday we highlighted the sale of Russian diamonds by London based jeweller Taylor and Hart, a jewellery start-up who like to make a lot of noise about ethical sourcing, blood diamonds and the normal tech bro narrative about ‘disruption’ AI and space travel.

When we searched the Taylor and Hart diamond inventory yesterday morning as,Russian aircraft pummelled Ukarine and tanks rolled acrossed border crossings, Taylor and Hart has literally thousands of Russian diamonds listed for sale on their website. All described as being ‘ethically sourced’.

We tweeted about this and posted on instagram.

Fast forward to today and we couldn’t find any diamonds whose country of origin was listed as Russia on the Taylor and Hart website. Explicitly.

When you search for a diamond on Taylor and Hart you can tick a box that allows you to only see diamonds whose country of origin is known.

We ticked this box and carried out a search of diamonds. We couldn’t find any diamonds whose country of origin was Russia, however, there were many whose origin was described as: Kimberley Process.

Firstly, the Kimberley Process is not a country. Its a deeply flawed process designed to keep conflict diamonds from entering the global supply chain, which it fails to do.

Secondly, on the diamond page, you are able to view an origin report, just above the link to the GIA report (comendable transparency). Click on this report and you can see where the diamonds come from and in all the cases we looked at today, they came from Russia.

Despite efforts to make it look like they have removed Russian diamonds from their site, Taylor and Hart are still hawking Russian diamonds to customers and describing them as ‘ethically sourced’

All Russian diamonds are mined by the Russian diamond mining giant Alrosa, who are 33% owned by the Russian state, not to mentioned several dodgy individuals with links to Putin. Money from the sales of Russian diamonds have helped fund the tanks, guns and bombs that are killing people in Ukraine.