Cushion

A cushion softens every line it has. Square or gently rectangular with rounded corners, it takes its name from the pillow it resembles, and it descends directly from the old mine cuts worked by candlelight in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

That lineage is still visible in how it behaves. The facets are larger and fewer than a modern round, so a cushion throws broad, slow flashes rather than fine white sparkle. Two families exist and they look genuinely different: the chunky cut, with large open facets and distinct flashes, and the crushed-ice cut, where smaller facets scatter light into something closer to shattered glass. Neither is better. They photograph differently and they wear differently, and it is worth deciding which you are looking at before comparing prices.

Cushions hold body colour more openly than a round. A faint warmth that would vanish in a brilliant will show here as a tint. Some people want that, particularly in yellow gold, where a warmer stone sits more naturally against the metal.

The rounded corners make it robust and easy to set. It carries a halo especially well, the softness of the outline echoed rather than fought, and in a plain solitaire it looks like something inherited rather than bought.