September/October 2003 • Style: The Alchemy of Beauty • Selling: Living the Online Dream • Sources: Sparkle in Peace • Fall Show Guide Exhibitor Lists and Floorplans • Books: Tahitian Pearl • News & Updates • In This Issue

Sparkle in Peace
By D. Douglas Graham

Illustration by Joe Rocco.

A company called LifeGem gives memorials for the dead a high-tech twist.

In modern times we're squeamish about death. Less than a hundred years ago, people were posing with their late loved ones for posthumous portraits on the family sofa or saving hair samples to be pressed into scrapbooks or jewelry, objects known then as "memento mori." These days we ignore the Grim Reaper, perhaps hoping he will not notice us.

This cultural avoidance of death led to a decidedly mixed reception for the latest incarnation of the memento mori — a synthetic diamond created from the carbon residual of a cremated corpse. The company responsible, the Chicago-based International Research and Recovery Corporation, doing business as LifeGem, is gambling on the idea that in the future people will want more than heirlooms and a few old photos by which to remember their loved ones.

According to LifeGem vice president of operations Dean VandenBiesen, demand for this unusual product has already far outpaced production.

"The segment of the population most attracted to this concept is put off by traditional burial," VandenBiesen says. "Modern funeral and burial rites tend to abstract death, putting an unintended wedge between the deceased and his or her survivors. Many people prefer something more personal. They enjoyed a very close relationship with the person who died, and they want something physical they can use to connect to their memory."

That is not to say that the LifeGem concept was a hit from the get-go. There was a great deal of early resistance on the part of both the funeral and jewelry industries, not to mention the court of public opinion.

"Silly season stories this year haven't been much sillier than the news that diamonds can literally be a person's best friend — or husband, or cat," wrote a columnist in the United Kingdom-based newspaper The Guardian. "While this obviously brings new meaning to the concept of being wrapped around somebody's little finger, there are other possibilities. Why make a marriage proposal with your grandmother's old ring when you could pop the question with your grandmother in diamond form?"

Online chat rooms filled with discussions about it. Some approved of the idea, saying that coming back as a bauble was more fitting than rotting in the ground or being cremated and preserved in an urn. Other reactions ranged from "yuck" to worries about losing a loved one down the drain.

Such reluctance was understandable, VandenBiesen admits. Upon launching its controversial enterprise, LifeGem took the position that sometimes change needs a little nudge before it's accepted. The company didn't try to sell its concept to the jewelry and funeral trades. Instead, it brought its case directly to the consumer by way of a media blitz.

The campaign's opening salvo was a front-page article in the Chicago Tribune published last year. This was followed by a swamp of coverage in similar publications around the world, a series of radio interviews, and a spate of appearances on high-profile network TV programs such as "The Tonight Show" and "Inside Edition."

The tactic paid off in spades. According to VandenBiesen, the demand for LifeGem's services soared to five times the amount estimated in the company's business plan. LifeGem had banked on the notion that broad public exposure would generate strong public demand. It also correctly assumed that media attention would not be hard to get because the product for sale was so unusual.

While the national media has thus far been LifeGem's greatest marketing asset, the company also promotes itself by attending trade shows, mass-mailing promotional literature to funeral homes, and educating funeral directors in the art and practice of selling its products.

"LifeGem will eventually evolve into an important component of the synthetic diamond market," asserts Alex Grizenko, president of Lucent Diamonds Inc., a manufacturer of synthetic diamonds and exclusive worldwide producer of the LifeGem diamonds. "It appeals to a totally different market than a conventional manufactured diamond, and the concept will take off because it's basically an aftermarket product. A very large percentage of the U.S. population chooses cremation over burial. Right now it's roughly 38 percent, and the number is growing. Once a family opts for cremation, the only question remaining is whether to keep the ashes in an urn or have them converted into a diamond. From the perspective of a keepsake, a diamond is far superior to an urn for keeping memory alive. In my opinion, LifeGem has a very bright future. Demand for the product is already huge. In fact, it's my biggest headache right now."

Synthetic diamond made from test carbon. Photo courtesy LifeGem.

Replicating Nature
The technology and technique employed in the creation of LifeGem diamonds — which the company refers to simply as "LifeGems" — is similar to the process used to create conventional manufactured diamonds.

According to VandenBiesen, carbon recovered from the cremation process is first reduced to a very fine, black powder. The powder is purified using extremely high temperatures, then subjected to high pressure in the range of a million pounds per square inch and a temperature gradient from 2,000 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's pretty much standard operating procedure for diamond making. The biggest departure from business as usual is the main ingredient and how it is collected. The carbon must be preserved during the cremation process. The challenge is that cremation has become very efficient in modern times. Little remains after the oven has done its work, but LifeGem has developed a method whereby the body's carbon remains intact.

"You don't really need much carbon for the process to be successful," VandenBiesen says. "The average person will yield about 5 percent carbon, which is enough to produce roughly 50 diamonds. In such a case, the diamonds we build will be 100 percent the product of the carbon left behind by that one person.

"The process gets more complicated when you're working with remains that have not been subjected to LifeGem preservation," he continues. "When someone asks us to make a stone from someone who's been cremated a long time, we have to enrich the ashes with an additional carbon source. Ash, by definition, is carbonless. It can be as low in carbon content as 1.5 percent or as high as 10 percent. You need a carbon concentration of up to 50 percent to make a diamond, and ashes by themselves won't cut it. That's why some families decide on LifeGem in advance of a loved one's demise."

If a person decides in advance to undergo the LifeGem process, the crematorium uses a special process to collect the carbon. The body is subjected to the same amount of heat as is employed in a conventional cremation, but the amount of oxygen used is reduced, yielding more carbon. The incinerator is turned off at a certain point in the process so that the technician can harvest the carbon. Only a miniscule amount is required.

Once cremation is complete, the family gets the ashes and LifeGem gets the raw material from which the diamond will be produced. Without backlogs to slow things down, carbon becomes stone in 12 to 16 weeks.

Using resources already at its disposal, the company can currently process between 500 and 1,000 bodies per year.

"Carbon collection isn't the problem," VandenBiesen says. "The bottleneck is creating and growing the diamonds. A diamond press is a very costly, very heavy, very capital-intensive piece of industrial equipment. You're stuck with a lot of money-consuming maintenance, and some components become self-destructive because of the outrageous temperatures involved in the pressing process."

To turn its wares into faceted stones, LifeGem employs a handful of diamond cutters around the world. The cutters use abrasive wheels that leave behind a very fine dust, which VandenBiesen claims is not recoverable.

At the moment, LifeGem works with 250 funeral homes and crematoriums in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, and South Africa. The company sells its products exclusively through its network of funeral industry partners. It's also in negotiation with industry people in China and Japan, who hope to introduce the service to consumers in the Pacific Rim.

The cost of a LifeGem varies with size. Quarter-carat single stones usually run around $2,300, while a 3/4-carat rock can top $10,000. Multiple stones can be produced from a single body, and they are available to consumers at a discount so long as all are the same carat size.

"Carbon is extremely abundant in the human body," VandenBiesen explains. "Theoretically, more than 50 stones could be mass-produced from the carbon harvested from a single body, possibly many more. Mass production may well be the choice of certain of the rich and famous whose remains might be preserved and auctioned off for charity. What better way for a star to shine on after he or she shuffles off this mortal coil than to be reborn in the form of a precious stone? LifeGem has already dealt with some pretty high-powered clients, but at the moment we're not disposed to reveal their names."

LifeGem assigns a 16-digit tracking number to finished products, which is later laser-etched onto each diamond's girdle by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). The client also gets a report with a GIA serial number, a description of the stone's color, and the fact that it was lab-produced.

In appearance and gemological properties, a LifeGem diamond isn't much different from a standard synthetic diamond. A study done by the GIA and published in Gems & Gemology reported that the major chemical difference is that LifeGem diamonds contain traces of a number of elements found in the human body. Chief among those is boron, which lends LifeGem diamonds their blue color. But since boron requires expensive equipment to detect, and there's no non-destructive way to identify the source of the carbon, differentiating LifeGem diamonds from other synthetics is difficult to do.

Getting Past "Creepy"
Will the LifeGem concept fly over time? Many people will automatically recoil at the notion of jewelry produced from the incinerated remains of late spouses, parents, children, or even pets. Yet according to experts in the field of grief recovery, the gag reflex alone will probably not be enough to sink LifeGem or any imitator that comes along in its wake.

According to Russell Friedman, executive director of The Grief Recovery Institute in Sherman Oaks, California, the true value of funerary mementos is their ability to summon memories of the person who has passed. Such reflections help survivors discover and complete any unfinished emotional business that still stands between them and the deceased. If a LifeGem diamond does that, the company will remain airborne.

"Any object of this type is a grief recovery stimulus, a reminder of the person that has died," Friedman says. "We use such things to help us work out any unfinished business that still exists between us and that person. To properly do its job, the object should trigger the memories we need to accomplish that. It should not be viewed as a means for reaching emotional completion all by itself. LifeGem will succeed or fail to the extent that it performs the service for which it was conceived."