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P op culture history was made on August 26, 2025, with the reveal of Taylor Swift’s engagement to three-time Super Bowl champ Travis Kelce. The musician’s tasteful, vintage-style engagement ring, as seen in photos of the lovebirds posted on Instagram, instantly became a hot topic. Her design features an Old Mine-cut diamond set on a bespoke gold mount – a notable departure from the more conventional round-cut engagement diamond style, yet a look that’s been commanding the attention of savvy jewelry collectors in recent years.
The ring’s setting shows Swift’s taste for the return of bold, gold jewelry. While today many Old Mine, Old Euro and other antique-cut stones are set on thin, modern designs, Swift’s band, made by Kindred Lubeck at Artifex Fine Jewelry in New York, is more traditionally thick and decadently engraved.
“If I’m not inspired by the stone, I cannot make the piece of jewelry – it won’t happen,” Lubeck tells Sotheby’s. Now, this autumn, she’s teaming up with gem dealer Anup Jogani to release a series of bespoke rings at Sotheby’s. Three included in a November Gem Drop auction featured antique diamonds and a blue sapphire, while two more items on offer during December’s High Jewelry boast a 2.02-carat cut-cornered rectangular step-cut diamond and a 5.14-carat cushion-cut diamond.
“My role in the jewelry world is to keep handcraft alive.”
Lubeck was trained in hand-engraving by her father, a goldsmith by trade, and established a formidable reputation as the founder of Artifex Fine Jewelry in New York City. “My role in the jewelry world,” says Lubeck, ”is to keep handcraft alive.” Delicate, ornate and dazzling with subtle detail, Lubeck’s designs reveal her belief that each gemstone should define the ring’s ultimate character. “I really just let the stone do the talking,” she says. “If the stone is more of a geometric cut, you’ll see more geometric engraving.”
Jogani curated the stones specifically for Lubeck to design. The cinnamon-brown diamond sits between a Peruzzi cut and Old Mine cut, evoking a sepia nostalgia that plays to Lubeck’s traditional craft. The sapphire was already on Lubeck’s mind – its step cut is complemented by a custom Art Deco design. But fans of Swift’s elongated-cushion Old Mine diamond will no doubt be drawn to the classic 4ct Old Mine cut from the mid-1800s. “They’re different proportions, but they were cut in the same techniques and same feel as Swift’s stone,” Jogani tells Sotheby’s.
The call from Swift’s team caused no shortage of sleep for Lubeck. “I laid awake just going, is this real?” she recalls. “No, we’re doing this, and it has to be the best piece I ever made. And I feel that it is.”
Swift’s stone showcases her eye for a growing trend: the penchant Old Mine and other hand-cut vintage diamonds that feature a pronounced open culet and large facets for a distinctive look. Often dating to the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian eras, “they were made at a time when cutting styles weren’t so precise,” says Kathleen Smith Craig, Associate Specialist and Head of Sale, Fine Jewelry at Sotheby’s. “Old Mine diamonds just have a certain uniqueness that’s hard to replicate in modern-cut diamonds.”
An open culet refers to a diamond that comes to more of a plateau than a small point at its bottom. And whereas the smaller facets common in modern cuts appear “super sparkly,” says Craig, the larger facets of stones like Swift’s soften the visual impact of its estimated 7+ carats. Together, these traits give Old Mine diamonds a “subtle sparkle” designed to flicker brightly in candlelight.
Compared to modern diamonds, the value of Old Mine diamonds is less impacted by the presence of inclusions, or (often microscopic) flaws in a gemstone’s composition. “If you look inside a diamond under magnification, almost all have imperfections,” says Craig. “They can be thought of as a diamond’s fingerprint, because no two stones would have the same inclusions in the same places.” Among vintage diamond enthusiasts, inclusions are seen as a sign of a stone’s individuality rather than its uniform perfection.
“Old Mine diamonds just have a certain uniqueness that’s hard to replicate in modern-cut diamonds.”
Swift, whose sharp eye for fine jewelry is well known, isn’t the only collector to lust after the look in recent years. Antique cushion-cut diamonds are limited in supply, says Craig, making excellent examples harder than ever to hunt down. “People are looking for something that’s a little bit different, more special than your typical modern cuts, which tend to look alike,” says Craig. “The best way to find an older diamond is through auction.”
At Sotheby’s, antique diamonds often appear in seasonal jewelry auctions, as well as in The Gem Drop – a monthly release of unmarked gems often sold loose or simply set, allowing buyers to adapt them easily to changing fashions. Take, for instance, the August 2025 release of a 5.06-carat antique-cushion-cut diamond also set by Jogani. Similar to Swift’s ring, the diamond appears even larger than its carat size, due to its shallow proportions and elongated shape. “There’s definitely a trend towards more finger coverage, and that’s why people like these elongated diamond styles,” says Craig.
On the whole, antique cushion-cut diamonds have made a quiet but noticeable impact on the market, with examples from the past three years easily fetching six and seven figures at auction. Given Swift’s outsize cultural influence and the growing impact of designers like Lubeck, that trend is sure to grow.
