Why We Started
THE SILMARIL was founded in 2024 with a clear purpose: to make memorial diamonds accessible to New Zealanders without the overseas price premium. For too long, families in New Zealand who wanted to transform a loved one's hair into a diamond faced a difficult choice — pay NZ$3,500–$4,000+ to an international provider, or go without.
We built Silmaril to change that. By operating from Auckland and removing the international shipping, import duties, and intermediary margins that inflate overseas prices, we offer the same certified HPHT memorial diamond process from NZ$1,980 — up to 50% less than international competitors.
Every detail of our process — from the secure collection kit we post to your door to the One Guest, One Chamber guarantee — is designed around the trust that this kind of memorial requires. We work with human hair and pet hair equally, with no difference in care, quality, or price.
Hair Only — By Design
We work exclusively with hair. Not ashes, not bone ash — hair. This is a deliberate technical and quality decision. Hair is rich in carbon-bearing keratin, which we can extract, purify to 99.99% purity, and grow into a genuine diamond using our HPHT process. Cremation ashes, by contrast, contain high levels of calcium phosphate, metal oxides, and other impurities that are incompatible with the HPHT process and would compromise the integrity of the finished stone.
If your loved one has been cremated and you saved hair beforehand — even a small amount — we can still help. If you have only ashes, we explain your options on our dedicated ashes page.
The Technology
We use High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) technology — the same process that replicates the natural conditions deep within the Earth where diamonds form. Carbon purified from your loved one's hair is placed in our HPHT chamber, where temperatures exceeding 1,300°C and pressures above 5 GPa cause it to crystallise into a real diamond over approximately 50 days.
The result is a stone that is physically and chemically identical to a mined diamond — not a simulant, not cubic zirconia. It passes every standard diamond test and can be optionally certified by the GIA or IGI on request.
