Marquise Cut Gemstones

What a Marquise Cut Is

A marquise is an elongated modified brilliant — the crown and pavilion divided into triangular and kite-shaped facets much as a round is, stretched onto an outline that tapers to a point at each end. The older name for that outline is the navette, French for little boat, and once you have seen the word the shape is difficult to unsee.

The story usually told is that Louis XV commissioned a stone cut to the shape of the mouth of Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, and that the cut has carried her title ever since. It is a charming attribution rather than a documented commission. What can be said with confidence is that pointed navette outlines appear in Georgian jewellery, that the shape was worked hard in the Edwardian period when platinum allowed fine claws and long narrow settings, and that it returned emphatically in the 1970s. It is in the middle of another revival now.

The marquise collection is small, and deliberately so: the shape is unforgiving and much of what is offered in it is not worth offering.

Two Points, Twice the Risk

Everything else in this article follows from a single engineering fact, so it is worth stating plainly and early.

A pear has one vulnerable apex. A marquise has two. Both are thin and shallow, because the outline tapers to nothing at each end and the pavilion has to taper with it. There is very little material at a marquise point — less depth, no curvature to distribute a knock. A blow a round would shrug off can chip a marquise tip, and a chipped point cannot be repaired without recutting the stone and losing its ratio.

This governs three decisions. How the stone must be set: V-claws at both ends, without exception, a claw shaped to a V that wraps the point rather than sitting beside it. Which species are sensible, because a brittle or cleavage-prone mineral is being asked to hold two of the most fragile geometries in gem cutting. And what you inspect before buying, because a point already abraded, or cut blunt to hide earlier damage, is the commonest fault in old-stock marquise material.

None of this is a reason to avoid the shape. It is a reason to insist on the setting it requires.

Maximum Spread Per Carat

The marquise exists because it delivers the largest face-up spread of the common shapes — the area presented to the eye for a given carat weight. Weight in a cut stone is largely held in the pavilion, below the girdle, where it does nothing for apparent size. A marquise is long, narrow and comparatively shallow, so more of its weight sits in the outline rather than under it.

A marquise therefore looks substantially larger than a round of the same weight, and larger than an oval or a cushion. On a hand, a one-carat marquise reads closer to a stone half again its weight. For a buyer working to a budget in carats that is the whole argument for the shape, and it is a real one rather than a marketing one.

The honest qualification is that the spread comes from being shallow, and shallow stones window. A marquise cut for spread and nothing else shows a pale washed patch through its middle where the pavilion is too flat to return light. The advantage is genuine and also the easiest in gem cutting to squander: a well-cut marquise gives you more stone for the weight, a badly cut one more stone that does less.

Length-to-Width Ratio

Length-to-width ratio is the length of the outline divided by its width, and in a marquise it decides the character of the stone. The useful range runs from roughly 1.75 to 2.25, with about 2.00 as the classic — twice as long as it is wide.

Below about 1.80 a marquise reads as a fat oval with points stuck on the ends. It loses the sweep that makes the shape worth having, the shoulders become heavy, and the eye stops reading it as a navette at all. Above about 2.20 the stone is dramatic, long and unmistakable, but pays for it twice over: the points become thinner and more fragile still, and the elongated pavilion becomes more prone to a dark band across its waist.

None of this is visible in a carat weight. Two one-carat marquises at 1.85 and 2.20 are different objects, and neither is correct. It is a taste decision, made deliberately from the measurements rather than discovered after the stone arrives.

The Bow-Tie Is Worst Here

A bow-tie is a dark band running across the width of an elongated stone at its widest point, shaped roughly like its name. Every elongated brilliant can show one; the marquise is the shape most prone to it, more so than the oval or the pear.

The mechanism is not mysterious. A brilliant pavilion returns light by reflecting it internally from facets angled to send it back up through the crown. In an elongated outline, the facets across the middle need light arriving from a narrow band of high angles, and the wearer's own head sits exactly where that light would come from. What returns instead is the dark of the observer: a shadowed band across the waist.

Almost every marquise has some bow-tie. The question is never whether one is present but how severe it is, and whether it moves and breaks up as the stone tilts or sits there as a dead grey bar. A slight mobile bow-tie is normal. A wide static one is a cutting fault and devalues the stone.

It cannot be judged from a still photograph — lighting and retouching remove bow-ties routinely. Judge it in person, or in honest unedited video under ordinary light, or not at all.

Symmetry Faults Specific to the Marquise

A marquise shows asymmetry more readily than any shape except the heart, because the eye has two points and a long axis to compare against, and it does so instantly and without being asked.

Four things must hold. Both points must sit on the long axis, not offset to one side, and must be equal to each other — one blunter than the other reads as a mistake even to someone who cannot say what they are looking at. The two halves must mirror across both axes. The widest part must sit at the centre of the length, not a third of the way along, or the stone looks as though it is falling forward. And the shoulders, the curves between the widest point and each tip, must match; one full shoulder and one flat one looks bent.

These faults survive setting. Claws do not hide them, and they do not become less visible with familiarity.

Windowing and Extinction

Windowing is the pale transparent patch that appears when a pavilion is too shallow to return light: instead of brilliance you see straight through the stone. Extinction is the opposite fault, the dead black zones that appear when a pavilion is cut too deep and light is trapped rather than returned.

The tapering outline makes both faults easy to see and, unusually, lets one stone display both. The belly is where cutters chase spread, so it is where the pavilion is left too shallow and where a window opens. A cutter compensating for depth loss at the tips can leave them too deep, where they go dark. A stone bright at the ends and pale through the middle, or lively in the belly and dead at the points, is telling you exactly where its proportions went wrong.

Look at a marquise face-up in even light with nothing patterned behind it. Brilliance should carry across the whole outline, tip to tip.

Which Gemstones Suit a Marquise

The shape follows the rough. Marquise cutting suits crystals that grow long and prismatic, because an elongated outline can be taken from such rough with far less waste than a round would require. That points straight at tourmaline, which grows in long striated prisms; at aquamarine and beryl generally, which grow in hexagonal columns; and at kunzite, which occurs in large elongated crystals and is frequently cut this way.

Against that, some species are poor candidates and it is better to say so. Emerald is brittle because of its internal fractures. Tanzanite has distinct cleavage. Topaz has perfect basal cleavage and will split under a direct blow. Opal is soft. Each is being asked to survive as two thin points, and in each case it is the wrong request; an emerald cut or an oval will outlast a marquise in the same material. Sapphire and ruby, at Mohs 9 and without cleavage, take the shape as safely as anything can.

One further point works in the marquise's favour. Strongly pleochroic material — tourmaline, kunzite, andalusite — shows different colours down different crystal directions, and the long axis of a marquise very often follows the crystal's own axis. That can give the cutter the strongest colour direction along the face. It can also go the other way and leave the stone darker at the ends. Orientation has to be checked in the finished stone rather than assumed from the species.

Setting a Marquise

V-claws at both points, and this is not a preference. A claw sitting alongside a tip rather than wrapping it leaves the most vulnerable part of the stone exposed, and the stone will eventually find something to hit. For a long outline, above about 2.10, six claws are safer than four. A full bezel, or a partial bezel closing over both points, is the most protective option and suits softer material particularly well.

Orientation is the other decision. Set north-south, running the length of the finger, a marquise elongates the hand, and that is much of why the shape is bought at all. Set east-west it becomes a deliberate contemporary choice — architectural rather than classical — but the points are more exposed to knocks from either side, which raises the case for a bezel.

Judging a Marquise Before You Buy

Take the measurements first and work out the ratio yourself; it tells you more about how the stone will look than the carat weight does. Then check the outline for symmetry — points on axis and equal, widest part central, shoulders matching. Then look at the points under magnification for abrasion or a blunted tip, and confirm that whoever sets it will use V-claws.

Then look at the light. Face-up in even daylight, still and then moving: a window through the belly, extinction at the ends, and the behaviour of the bow-tie. A still photograph will not answer any of these honestly, so ask for video. The standard we apply is set out in how SARATTI grades gemstones, and the discussion of pointed shapes in our buyer's guide to pear cuts applies with double force here.

Choosing a Marquise

Decide the ratio first, because it cannot be changed and it is what you will look at. Choose the species with durability in mind, and let the two points rule out the brittle candidates rather than hoping for the best. Accept a modest mobile bow-tie as the price of the shape and refuse a heavy static one. And plan the setting at the same time as the stone, because a marquise in the wrong mount is a stone waiting to be damaged. The wider loose gemstone collection is where to look if the shape matters less to you than the material.

Every stone here is listed individually, with its own measurements and ratio, because in a shape this sensitive to proportion no general description is worth much. There are ten of them, which makes the next sentence matter more on this page than on any other: only part of what we can reach is listed online, and if what you want is not listed — a particular ratio, a particular species, a particular length — describe it, and we will go and look.