Man turns dead son into diamond: Compressed To ‘Remembrance Diamond’

Man Turns Dead Son Into Diamond

A father from Italy, whose 20-year-old son had passed away this year, chose to use his remains to create a diamond, the New York Daily News reports.

The 55-year-old Italian man, who remains unidentified, lost his son to a car crash in Treviso, Italy earlier this year. Since the young man had already been buried, the funeral parlor exhumed his son’s body and cremated it. He contacted a Swiss firm that specializes in using the remains of the dead to create diamonds, and sent the ashes.

Though it varies based on the diamond’s size, for a price of $18,000 in this instance, the company used the ashes in the same way most man-made diamonds are fashioned. The carbon from the ashes is filtered into a form that can create diamonds under the right pressure conditions, according to the Local. This is then moved into a chamber which recreates the heat and pressure conditions, so that the diamond can form in a way close to the way nature intended.

Since human ashes contain the potential carbon for this process, the final diamond is called a “remembrance diamond” by the Swiss company. The father received his remembrance diamond eight months later.

On The Web:

Man turns dead son into a diamond
http://www.emirates247.com/offbeat/crazy-world/man-turns-dead-son-into-a-diamond-2013-12-22-1.532122

Italian man turns son’s remains into a diamond
http://www.thelocal.it/20131220/italian-man-turns-sons-remains-into-diamond

Grieving Italian dad turns dead son into diamond
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/grieving-dad-turns-dead-son-diamond-article-1.1555568