Jubilee Diamond

The Jubilee Diamond, originally known as the Reitz Diamond is a colourless, cushion-shaped diamond weighing 245.35 carats (49.07 grams), making it the sixth largest diamond in the world. It was originally named after Francis William Reitz, the then president of the Orange Free State where the stone was discovered, before being renamed to honour the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1897.

The original stone, a rough octahedron weighing 650.80 carats (130.16 g), was discovered in 1895 at the Jagersfontein Mine in South Africa. A consortium of diamond merchants from London purchased it along with its even larger sister, the Excelsior, in 1896, and sent it to Amsterdam where it was polished by M.B. Barends. A 40 carat (8 g) chunk was removed, which itself yielded a 13.34 carat (2.668 g) pear-shaped gem eventually purchased by Dom Carlos I of Portugal.

Jones Diamond

The “Jones Diamond,” also known as the “Punch Jones Diamond,” "The Grover Jones Diamond," or "The Horseshoe Diamond," was an 34.48 carat (6.896 g) alluvial diamond found in Peterstown, West Virginia by members of the Jones family. It remains the largest alluvial diamond ever discovered in North America.

Diamond Characteristics

The bluish-white diamond weighed 34.48 carats (6.896 g), measured 5/8 of an inch (15.8 mm) across and possessed 12 diamond-shaped faces.

History of the Diamond

The diamond was discovered by William P. “Punch” Jones and his father, Grover C. Jones, Sr. while pitching horseshoes in April 1928. Believed to be simply a piece of shiny quartz common to the area, the stone was kept in a wooden cigar box inside a tool shed for fourteen years and throughout the Great Depression. In 1942, Punch brought the stone to a geology professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) -- now Virginia Tech -- in nearby Blacksburg, Virginia. Holden, shocked at Punch’s discovery, authenticated the diamond and the diamond was sent to the Smithsonian Institution where it remained for many years for display and safekeeping. In February of 1964, the Jones family brought the diamond back and placed it in a safe deposit box in the First Valley National Bank in Rich Creek, Virginia. In 1984, the Joneses auctioned the diamond through Sotheby's auction house in New York.

Jones Family

The story of the Jones Family is as interesting as the story of the "Jones Diamond." Grover C. Jones, Sr. and his wife Annie Grace Buckland Jones had seventeen children, sixteen consecutive boys and one girl.

During the New York World's Fair in 1940, the Jones family was featured there and were guests of the then President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, were introduced on National Broadcasting Company, and met the governor of New York and Mayor of New York City. Many business opportunists saw the Joneses as an incredible opportunity to reap financial benefits due to the numerical size of the family and the consecutive male births and invited Mr. Jones to tour the United States with his family, but Mr. Jones, thinking that his family was being exploited, refused to do so and returned with his family to the hometown of Peterstown, West Virginia.

West Virginia State Historical Marker

The text of the historical marker located in Peterstown, West Virginia reads the following, although some of the information is outdated as Mr. and Mrs. Jones are no longer living or in possession of the diamond (see above):

An alluvial diamond weighing 34.48 carats (6.896 g), largest to date found in North American was discovered here in April 1928, by William P. "Punch" Jones and his father Grover C. Jones, Sr., while pitching horseshoes in the home yard of Mrs. and Mrs. Grover C. Jones. "Punch" was later killed in combat during World War II. Mr. and Mrs. Grover C. Jones still retain ownership of the diamond.

Incomparable Diamond

In 1970, Louis Glick acquired the 890 carat (178 g) Incomparable Diamond, at that time the world's fourth largest rough diamond.

Alternate sources claim that this stone was only discovered in the early 1980s in the town of Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo, by a young girl playing outside her uncle's house, where rubble from a nearby diamond mine had been dumped.

The stone was cut by a team led by Marvin Samuels, who co-owned the stone along with Donald Zale of Zales Jewellers and Louis Glick. In November 1984 the finished stones were put on display: a single golden diamond of 407.48 carats (81.496 g) in a 'triolette' shape, and fourteen additional gems. Notably, the satellite stones cut from the Incomparable varied greatly in colour, from near-colourless to rich yellow-brown.

The largest of these stones still bears the name 'Incomparable Diamond', and was graded by the GIA as internally flawless in 1988.

Unusually, the Incomparable Diamond made an appearance on eBay in November 2002, though it remained unsold with a reserve of £15 million pounds sterling.

Hope Diamond

The Hope Diamond is a large (45.52 carat), deep blue diamond, currently housed in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. The diamond is legendary for the curse it supposedly puts on whoever possesses it. The Hope Diamond appears a brilliant blue to the naked eye because of trace amounts of boron within the diamond. The Hope Diamond exhibits red phosphorescence under ultraviolet light and is classified as a Type IIb diamond.

Origins

Hope Diamond's history can be easily traced to a blue diamond named the Tavernier Blue, which was originally mined from the Kollur mine in Golconda, India, and was a crudely cut triangle shape of 112 3/16 carats (22.44 g). French merchant-traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier purchased it sometime in 1660 or 1661. According to legend, the Tavernier Blue was stolen from an eye of a sculpted idol of the Hindu goddess Sita, the wife of Rama, the Seventh Avatara of Vishnu.

In 1668, Tavernier sold the diamond to King Louis XIV of France. Sieur Pitau, the court jeweller, cut it and produced a 67 1/8 carat (13.4 g) stone. The stone became known as the Blue Diamond of the Crown or the French Blue. It was set in gold and suspended on a neck ribbon for the King to wear on ceremonial occasions. In 1749, King Louis XV had it set on his pendant for the Order of the Golden Fleece. After his death, it fell into disuse.

When Louis XVI of France became king, he gave the diamond to Marie Antoinette to add to her collection of jewelry. During the French Revolution, while Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were held in prison, the pendant with the diamond was stolen on September 11, 1792, when six men broke into the house used to store the crown jewels. One of the robbers, cadet Guillot, took it to Le Havre along with the Gôte de Bretagne spinel and then to London where he tried to sell the jewels. In 1796, apparently seriously in debt, he handed the gem to Lancry de la Loyelle, who had Guillot put into prison for his trouble. There is no record of what had happened to the diamond after that.

The Hope diamond was recorded in the possession of a London diamond merchant Daniel Eliason in September 1812, which marks the earliest point that the exact history of the Hope Diamond can be definitively fixed. This diamond was generally believed to have been cut from the French Blue, a fact which was finally verified in 2005^[1]. It is often pointed out that the Hope Diamond came into recorded history almost exactly 20 years after the theft of the French Blue, just as the statute of limitations for the crime had expired.

It is believed that it may have been acquired by King George IV of the United Kingdom, although there is no record of the ownership in the Royal Archives at Windsor.

Hope Family

The diamond next resurfaced in the gem collection of Henry Philip Hope in 1824. He had it set on a brooch, which he sometimes lent to Louisa Beresford, the wife of his brother Henry Thomas Hope, to host society balls. After Henry Philip Hope died in 1839, his three nephews fought in court for ten years over his inheritance until Henry Hope acquired the gems, including the Hope Diamond. It was then put on display in the Great Exhibition of London in 1851 and Paris Exhibition Universelle in 1855, but was usually kept in a bank vault.

When Henry died on December 4, 1862, his wife Adele inherited the gem. At her death on March 31, 1884, it passed to her grandson Henry Francis Hope Pelham-Clinton Hope, the son of Henry and Adele's daughter, Henrietta, and Henry Pelham-Clinton, the sixth Duke of Newcastle. Francis, who had to add one additional Hope to his name, received his legacy in 1887. However, he had only a life interest to his inheritance, meaning he could not sell any part of it without court permission.

On November 27, 1894, he married his mistress, American actress May Yohe. She claimed she had worn the diamond at social gatherings (and had an exact replica made for her performances), but he claimed otherwise. Lord Francis lived beyond his means, and it eventually caught up with him. In 1896, his bankruptcy was discharged, but, as he could not sell the Hope Diamond until he had the court's permission, his wife supported them. In 1901, he was free to sell the Hope, but May ran off with Putnam Strong, son of former New York City mayor William L. Strong. Francis divorced her in 1902.

Road to the United States

Evalyn Walsh McLean

The diamond was sold for £29,000 to Adolf Weil, a London jewel merchant. Weil later sold the stone to U.S. diamond dealer Simon Frankel, who took it to New York. There, it was evaluated to be worth $141,032 (equal to £28,206 at the time). In 1908, Frankel sold the diamond to Salomon Habib in Paris for $400,000. It was presented in an aborted auction on June 24, 1909, alongside other possessions of Habib to settle his debts. Habib sold the Hope Diamond to Paris jewel merchant Rosenau for a sum equal to $80,000. In 1910, Rosenau sold it to Pierre Cartier for 550,000 francs.

Cartier re-set the stone and in 1911 sold it to U.S. socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean, who initially rejected it but afterwards wore it at every social occasion she organized. When she died in 1947, she had willed the diamond to her grandchildren, though her property would be in the hands of trustees until the eldest had reached 25 years of age, which would have meant at least 20 years in the future. However, the trustees gained permission to sell her jewels to settle her debts, and in 1949 sold them to New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

Winston exhibited the Hope Diamond in his "Court of Jewels," a tour of jewels around the United States, and various charity balls over the years but did not sell it. In August of 1958, the diamond was exhibited in the Canadian National Exhibition. He also had the bottom facet cut to increase the diamond's brilliance and donated it to the Smithsonian Institution on November 10, 1958, sending it through U.S. Mail in a plain brown paper bag. Winston never believed in any of the tales regarding the curse, and died on December 28th, 1978, of a heart attack at the age of 82.

Smithsonian years

The Hope Diamond is part of the National Gem Collection in the Smithsonian Institution, in the National Museum of Natural History. At first, it was placed inside a glass-fronted safe in a gem hall. In 1962, it was lent to an exhibition of French jewellery in Paris and in 1965 to South Africa to the Rand Easter Show. After renovations in 1997 to the gems exhibit were completed, the diamond was moved into its own display room, adjacent to the main gem exhibit, where it rests on a rotating pedestal inside of a cylinder made of 3-inch thick bullet-proof glass. The National Gem Collection is exhibited within the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals. The Hope Diamond is the most popular jewel on display.

The most recent examination in December 1988 by Graduate Gemologists of the Gemological Institute of America, shows the diamond to weigh 45.52 carats (9.104 g) and it is described as "Fancy dark grayish-blue." The stone exhibits a unique delayed fluorescence; like many other gemstones, it emits a dim light under ultraviolet light, but when the light source is removed, the diamond produces a brilliant red phosphorescence. The clarity was determined to be VS1, with whitish graining present. The cut was described as being "cushion antique brilliant with a faceted girdle and extra facets on the pavilion." The dimensions in terms of length, width, and depth are 25.60mm × 21.78mm × 12.00mm.

On February 9, 2005, the Smithsonian Institution published the findings of its year-long computer-aided geometry research on the gem and officially acknowledged the Hope Diamond is part of the stolen French Blue crown jewel.

The Curse

The first stories about the supposed curse of the Hope Diamond surfaced in 1909. In the June 25 issue of The Times an article written by the Paris correspondent listed a number of supposed owners who had come to an ignoble end.

According to legend, Tavernier stole the diamond from a Hindu idol. The diamond was one of the two eyes of the idol, and when the priests noticed it was missing, they placed a curse on whoever owned the diamond. One reason that this is not accepted is that the Hope's sister has not been found. The legend claimed that Tavernier died of fever soon after, and that his body was torn apart by wolves (but the historical record shows that he actually lived to 84). The Hope Diamond was blamed for the fall from the king's favor of madame Athenais de Montespan and French finance minister Nicolas Fouquet, the beheadings of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the rape, mutilation and beheading of the Princesse de Lamballe. The legend added fictitious persons: diamond cutter Wilhelm Fals (killed when his son Hendrik stole it); Hendrik Fals (suicide); Francois Beaulieu (starvation after he sold it to Daniel Eliason).

Simon Frankel (alleged to be in financial difficulties) had supposedly sold it to Jacques Colot (suicide); the next owner, Russian prince Kanitowski, who supposedly lent it to French actress Lorens Ladue, who he later shot, and was later himself killed by revolutionaries; jeweler Simon Montharides (killed with his family) and Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid (the diamond was blamed for his forced abdication) who had supposedly killed various members of his court for the stone. There is no evidence that most of these people ever existed.

May Yohe blamed the Hope for her misfortunes. In July 1902, months after Lord Francis divorced her, she told police in Australia that her lover, Putnam Strong, had abandoned her and taken her jewels. Incredibly, the couple reconciled, married later that year, but divorced in 1910. On her third marriage by 1920, she persuaded film producer George Kleine to back a 15-episode serial The Hope Diamond Mystery, which added more fictitious characters to the tale. It was not successful. In 1921, she hired Henry Leyford Gates to help her write The Mystery of the Hope Diamond, in which she starred as Lady Francis Hope. The film added more characters, including a fictionalized Tavernier, and added Marat among the diamond's "victims". She also wore her copy of the Hope, trying to generate more publicity to further her career.

Lord Francis Hope married Olive Muriel Thompson in 1904. They had three children before she died suddenly in 1912, a tragedy that has been attributed to The Curse.

Evalyn Walsh McLean added her own tales, including that one of the owners was Catherine the Great. McLean would bring the Diamond out for friends to try on, including Warren G. Harding and Florence Harding. McLean often strapped the Hope to her pet dog's collar while in residence at Friendship, in northwest Washington D.C.. There are also stories that she would frequently misplace it at parties, and then make a children's game out of finding the Hope.

It is also falsely claimed that it is not possible to take a clear photograph of the Hope Diamond.

Heart of Eternity Diamond

The Heart of Eternity is a diamond measuring 27.64 carats (5.528 g), rated in color as "Fancy Vivid Blue" by the Gemological Institute of America. The Heart of Eternity was cut by the Steinmetz group, who owned the diamond before selling it to the De Beers Group.

The Heart of Eternity is a member of an exceedingly rare class of colored diamonds. It was found in the Premier Diamond Mine of South Africa. Blue diamonds account for less than 0.1% of the output of the Premier mine,^{[citation needed]} which is the only mine in the world with an appreciable production of blue diamonds. Of the ten colored diamonds that drew the highest bids, six of those ten were blue diamonds, rating values as high as $550,000 to $580,000 per carat ($2750–2900/mg).

The original gem from which the Heart of Eternity came weighed 777 carats (155 g), which was considered to be a magical number, and set off a "gold rush" for similar gems. The cutting of the rough stone was planned for four to five months, until it was decided the rough gem would be cut into three pieces. The largest piece became the Millennium Star, and another part of the gem became the Heart of Eternity Diamond.

The Heart of Eternity was unveiled in January 2000 as part of the De Beers Millennium Jewels collection, which included the Millennium Star. The Heart of Eternity was featured with ten other blue diamonds; the collection of blue diamonds totaled 118 carats (23.6 g). The De Beers Millennium Jewels were displayed at London’s Millennium Dome throughout 2000. An attempt on November 7, 2000 to steal the collection was foiled.

During its exhibition at the Smithsonian, the Heart of Eternity was noted to be on loan from a private collector, giving rise to speculation that it was sold sometime during the exhibition at the Millennium Dome in London.

Great Chrysanthemum Diamond

The Great Chrysanthemum Diamond is a diamond measuring 104.15 carats (20.830 g) with a Pear-Shaped Modified Brilliant Cut, rated in colour as Fancy Orange-Brown and I1 clarity by the Gemological Institute of America. The diamond's origins are in South Africa, where it was bought by the jeweler Julius Cohen as a 198.28 carat (39.656 g) rough in 1963. After buying it, Cohen returned to New York where he had it cut into its distinctive pear shape by S&M Kaufman. Because of its colouring similarities to the brown chyrsanthemum, it was named after that flower.

The Great Chrysanthemum has been shown in a number of diamond exhibits throughout the United States. In 1965, the Chrysanthemum was named a winner of one of the Diamonds International Awards and was placed on display in the Rand Easter Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa. Julius Cohen later sold the diamond to an unknown and reputedly foreign buyer and was purchased by Garrards of London around 2003.

The Golden Jubilee

The Golden Jubilee is currently the largest faceted diamond in the world. Since 1908, Cullinan I, also known as the Great Star of Africa, had held the title, which changed following the 1985 discovery of a large brown diamond of 755 carats (151 g) in the prolific blue ground of the Premier mine in South Africa; the diamond would later be cut and named The Golden Jubilee, with an as-of today unsurpassed weight of 545.67 carats (109.13 g).

The Premier mine was also the origin of the Cullinan diamonds in 1905, as well as other notables such as the Taylor-Burton in 1966 and the Centenary in 1986.

The "Unnamed Brown", as the Golden Jubilee was first known, was considered something of an ugly duckling by most. It was given to Gabriel Arellano (DCW) by De Beers for the purpose of testing special tools and cutting methods which had been developed for intended use on the flawless D-colour ("colourless") Centenary. These tools and methods had never been tested before, and the "Unnamed Brown" seemed the perfect guinea pig; it would be of no great loss should something go amiss.

To the surprise of all concerned, what resulted was a yellow-brown diamond in a fire rose cushion cut, outweighing Cullinan I by 15.37 carats (3.07 g). The stone remained largely unknown to the outside world, as the Golden Jubilee's sister, the Centenary, had already been selected and promoted to herald De Beer's centennial celebrations in 1988.

The unnamed diamond had earlier been brought to Thailand by the Thai Diamond Manufacturers Association to be exhibited in the Thai Board of Investment Exhibition in Laem Chabang. There was a mile-long queue to see the diamond, which outshone all other exhibits.

While the current whereabouts of the Centenary are unknown, the Golden Jubilee is known to have been purchased from De Beers by a group led by Henry Ho of Thailand in 1995. The diamond was brought to Pope John Paul II in the Vatican to receive the papal blessing. It was also blessed by the Supreme Buddhist Patriarch and the Supreme Imam in Thailand. The Golden Jubilee Diamond was named by King Bhumibol Adulyadej and given to him in honour of his 50th coronation anniversary. It was initially planned to mount the Golden Jubilee in the royal scepter. A subsequent plan was to have it mounted in a royal seal.

The Golden Jubilee Diamond has been exhibited at Henry Ho's 59-story Jewelry Trade Center in Bangkok, the Central Department Store in Lard Prao, Thailand, and internationally in Basel (Switzerland), Borsheims in Omaha, USA (owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.), and Gleims Jewelers in Palo Alto, USA. It is now located in the Royal Thai Palace as part of the crown jewels.

Florentine Diamond

The Florentine Diamond is a lost diamond of Indian origin. It is light yellow in colour with very slight green overtones. It is cut in the form of an irregular nine-sided 126-facet double rose cut, with a weight of 137.27 carats (27.454 g). The stone is also known as the Tuscan, the Tuscany Diamond, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Austrian Diamond and the Austrian Yellow Diamond.

Disputed history

The stone's origins are disputed. Reportedly, it has been cut by Lodewyk van Berken for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.^[1]. Charles is said to have been wearing it when he fell in the Battle of Morat on June 22, 1476. A peasant or foot soldier found it on the Duke's person and sold it for a florin, thinking it was glass. The new owner Bartholomew May, a citizen of Berne, sold it to the Genoese, who sold it in turn to Ludovico Sforza. By way of the Fuggers it came into the Medici treasury at Florence. Pope Julius II is also named as one of its owners.

Another version of the stone's early history is that the rough stone was acquired in the late 1500s from the King of Vijayanagar in southern India by the Portuguese Governor of Goa, Ludovico Castro, Count of Montesanto, after the king's defeat by Portuguese troops. The crystal was deposited with the Jesuits in Rome until, after lengthy negotiations, Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany succeeded in buying it from the Castro-Noranha family for 35,000 Portuguese scudi crocati.

Duke Ferdinand's son, Cosimo II, finally entrusted his father's purchase to a cutter, Pompeo Studentoli, a Venetian working in Florence. The finished gem was delivered on October 10, 1615. An inventory drawn up on Cosimo's death confirms the acquisition of the rough diamond by Ferdinand and describes the gem as 'faceted on both sides and encircled by a diamond encrusted band'.

Documented history

Documented history begins when Jean Baptiste Tavernier, the French jeweller and traveller saw the stone among the possessions of Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1657. It then passed into the hands of the Habsburgs when the last of the Medicis died through the marriage of Francis III Stephan of Lorraine to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and was placed in the Habsburg Crown Jewels in the Hofburg in Vienna. At the time it was valued at $750,000.

After the fall of the Austrian Empire during World War I, the stone was taken by the Imperial Family into exile in Switzerland. The stone was stolen some time after 1918 by a person close to the family and taken to South America with other gems of the Crown Jewels. After this, it was rumoured that the diamond was brought into the United States in the 1920's and was recut and sold.

Excelsior Diamond

The Excelsior Diamond was found on June 30, 1893 at the Jagersfontein Mine by a worker while loading a truck. The man was able to hide the diamond from the supervisors but delivered it to the manager of the mine himself. Until 1905, when the larger Cullinan diamond was found, the Excelsior was the largest known diamond in the world. It had a blue-white tint and weighed 971-3/4 carats (194.2 g). It was ultimately cut into ten stones weighing from 13 to 68 carats. (2.6 to 13.6 g). Immediately after its discovery the news spread around the world. For five centuries India boasted the largest diamond in the world and the Great Moghul and was finally surpassed by South Africa.

Dresden Green Diamond

The Dresden Green diamond is a 41 carat (8.2 g) natural green diamond that has a historical record dating to 1722, when a London news-sheet carried an article about it in its 25 October-27th edition.

It is named after the capital of Saxony, Germany where it has been on display for most of the last two centuries. It did make some sojourns following World War II, to the Soviet Union until 1958, and to the Smithsonian in Washington DC, USA in 2000, where it was displayed in the same room as the Hope diamond.

The stone's unique green color is due to natural exposure to radioactive materials (see Diamond enhancement#Irradiation). The stone is being used to compare natural versus lab-produced green diamonds — it is hoped that it can be used to devise a test to differentiate between naturally green diamonds, which are quite rare, and lab-produced ones.

This diamond is located in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden "The New Green Vault"