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Then, and only then, the stage was set for fraud as dealers and jewelers stretched “canary” to be a term of endearment for any and every yellowish diamond.

The Cape Connection

From day one, South African diamonds had a reputation for being slightly yellow. Accounts of the diamond trade written between 1880 and 1900 stress this fact. Indeed, the term “Cape” was coined to describe the distinctively yellowish—as opposed to yellow—diamonds from Kimberley that began to flood the market in the 1870s. Originally a reference to all stones of South African origin, the term “Cape” was narrowed within a decade or so to a synonym for the marring presence of yellow.

Here’s what Max Bauer had to say about the term in his 1896 masterpiece “Precious Stones.”

“The majority of what are usually regarded as white Cape diamonds are in reality more or less tinged with yellow. Stones of this tint are described as being ‘Cape white,’…Such a stone scarcely attains to the fire and play of color of a perfectly colourless Indian or Brazilian stone; moreover, even though cut in the best brilliant form, it will appear dusky when compared with the latter and will therefore be less highly prized.”

Curiously, Bauer seems to have restricted the definition of the term “Cape” to stones that have, at most, a slight cast—as opposed to a full-fledged composition—of yellow. He continues: “Stones of a distinct, though pale, yellow colour are specially common; they vary in shade from a [canary or straw-yellow] to a light coffee brown, and are naturally less prized than the Cape whites or others already mentioned.”

Note that Bauer equated “canary” with “straw-yellow,” hardly the hue that comes to mind today for canaries. Today such stones are invariably fancy—preferably fancy-intense—yellow on the GIA colored diamond grading scale. Yet Bauer seemed to use “canary” interchangeably with “Cape,” or, at least, the light-yellow portion of the Cape series. Since “Cape” stones are ones he viewed as distinct from “Fancy” stones, how did “canary” become a sobriquet for fine yellow diamonds?

Mellow Yellows

By 1900, “Cape” seems to have become a comprehensive term for all degrees of perceptible yellow in diamonds that did not render them fancy color. Stones on the border, or squarely in the realm of fancies needed jargon of their own. In the English-speaking world, however, the color-term of choice became “canary.” According to eminent gemologist Robert Crowningshield, England’s highly influential Basil Anderson used the phrase “true canary” to segregate diamonds with strong absorption spectra and correspondingly deep yellow colors from ones he called “Capes” with weaker lines and varyingly yellowish hues when making his historic spectroscopic studies of the 1930s. The polar distinction between “Cape” and “canary” has been with us ever since. Presumably, Anderson was simply codifying what was by then a division between the two. But, apparently, the division stayed a trade secret and many retailers sold “Capes” as “canaries.”