Antonio Massimo Tucci has spent more than four decades training his eye on natural diamonds. His real ambition, though, lies in overturning the industry’s obsession with perfection.
At 68, the Milan-born, Marbella-based diamantaire is preparing to launch Fantasia Natural Diamond Creations, a venture designed to reposition flawed, lower-clarity stones sourced from Angola, Zimbabwe and South Africa into premium jewelry using laser technology and hand-craftsmanship. The company, now aligned with the Responsible Jewellery Council, is slated to launch later this year and targets markets including the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
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The concept emerged from a promise Tucci made to his brother Roberto in the 1980s when both were working as diamond traders in South Africa. “I want to make low-grade materials come alive again,” Tucci explains, describing the mission behind his upcoming brand. For decades, stones that failed to meet industry standards for clarity and purity were crushed into industrial abrasives or discarded. Tucci’s approach treats these diamonds as raw material for a new category of luxury goods, even crafting them into unconventional shapes like turtles, something he notes has never been attempted before.
Tucci’s journey into gemology began at age eight during a train journey through Europe, when a conversation with a diamond trader sparked a lifelong fascination. By 16, he had committed to studying diamonds despite his father’s skepticism. He attended the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica, where he met Dr Errol Fyfe, then-director of the Jewellery Council of South Africa. The Council was establishing a diamond certification laboratory and needed skilled gemologists. Tucci seized the opportunity, arriving in Johannesburg in 1979 and remaining for 30 years to build his business in diamond polishing and trading.
In 1981, Roberto joined his brother in South Africa, and together they founded Tucci and Company, which later evolved into Bijem, a luxury brand. The brothers were among the first to deploy laser technology in South African diamond work, achieving quality standards that rivaled global benchmarks. Processing smaller diamonds, however, required expertise only available in Surat, India’s diamond cutting and polishing hub. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Tucci and Roberto traveled monthly on South African Airways to Mumbai with rough stones, a routine that deepened Tucci’s appreciation for Indian craftsmanship and the polki tradition, an ancient art of jewelry-making using uncut natural diamonds that traces back to the Mughal era.
By 2014, contemplating retirement but restless with inactivity, Tucci revived his long-held dream. He established a research and development program in Surat to test low-grade diamonds using laser cutting techniques. The breakthrough came when he reframed the production process entirely. “Imagine if a piece of jewelry was a building and we are the architects,” he told his team. “From now on, we are going to create tiles to cover those buildings.” The method involved slicing rough diamond pieces like bread loaves, then shaping and finishing them by hand. Tucci invested approximately $700,000 in a modern factory in Katargam, Surat, designed as “a workshop where high technology and artisanship come together.”
The resulting pieces challenge conventional wisdom about diamond quality. Tucci displays a multi-hued bracelet set in 18-karat gold on his left wrist, revealing what he calls “diamond tiles.” He predicts that a comparable men’s bracelet would retail under $5,000 once the brand launches. “Would you ever assume these are low-grade diamonds?” he asks, emphasizing that the beauty emerges precisely from the stones’ faults and imperfections rather than their perfection. For years, he notes, the diamond industry operated on the assumption that gems must be pure and absolutely transparent. His innovation repositions that logic entirely.
Meanwhile, the timing of Fantasia’s launch coincides with significant market shifts. Laboratory-grown diamonds have gained traction globally, pressuring natural diamond producers to differentiate their offerings. Tucci observed this trend closely. Three to four years ago, he predicted that lab-grown wholesale prices would collapse from $700-$800 per carat to around $300 within one or two years. Today, lab-grown diamonds trade at wholesale prices barely exceeding $50 per carat. While Tucci acknowledges that lab-grown stones have a place in the market, he remains convinced they will never replace natural diamonds. “The natural diamonds industry has been able to address this issue fairly thoroughly,” he says, predicting that natural diamond prices will stabilize and that the gems will be “finally reinstated to the place that it belongs to, as the gem of gems.”
Today, the Tucci brothers maintain operations across South Africa, Europe (Spain and Monaco), India and the U.A.E., with administrative and trade operations consolidated under Fantasia Diamonds Creations in Mauritius. Dubai represents a strategic positioning for the brand, leveraging the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre as a platform for global trade. Tucci has maintained connections to the city since the 1990s and plans retail locations there.
Tucci remains optimistic about the venture’s trajectory. “The company is going to be worth a lot of money within three years,” he predicts, though he declines to specify figures. “I don’t like to talk about zeros; zeros are not important,” he says, returning his jeweler’s loupe to his eye with characteristic focus on the work itself. Whether the market for beautifully imperfect diamonds is as large as his ambition remains the question his launch will answer.