Each diamond is unique. Like fingerprints, no two are exactly alike.
Diamonds have decorated kings, inspired poets, delighted movie stars, brought untimely death to the famous and infamous--even been credited with curing illnesses. British monarchs added them to their royal treasure troves. French kings adored them. Jehan Shah, builder of the Taj Mahal, wore an 88-carat heirloom at his coronation in 1628.
The compulsion to own the very best survives in today's world of dwindling monarchies. Consider recent diamond auction fever. In 1988 alone, nine diamonds sold at either Christie's or Sotheby's New York auctions brought prices of between $185,200 and $926,315 a carat.
Consider, too, that American shoppers spent almost $12 billion on diamond jewelry last year--30% more than they spent on all beauty aids and more than six times what they spent on furs. They said "I love you" with engagement rings. They said "I love you more than ever" with anniversary bands. They celebrated birthdays and Christmas and special private moments with tennis bracelets and cocktail rings and necklaces and pendants, all of them ablaze with diamonds. The top social set--and a few beauty queens--drew all eyes with their shimmering new tiaras.
Diamonds are the ultimate symbol of romance. More than 500 years ago, in 1477, Maximilliam of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy to seal their marriage vows. Maximillian had obviously paid heed to what the ancients said, namely that the third finger of the left hand connected directly to the heart by the Vein of Love. That's the finger he chose for Mary's ring.
Diamonds, too, offer an awesome connection with a Darwinian pre-history and lands populated with dinosaurs, not people. The youngest volcanic rock in which diamonds are brought to the earth's surface is about 70 million years old. When you pick up your diamond jewelry--ring, cuff link or tiara--you are literally holding a piece of geological history in your hand.
The diamond world is truly global. Today, the two richest sources of gem quality diamonds are Botswana, an emerging Third World country which relies on these gemstones for three quarters of its total revenues, and the former Soviet Union, whose bountiful mines are clustered in the frozen Siberian tundra.
For some curious reason, the most productive mines seem almost always to be found in inaccessible regions. The world's top producer, which only went into full operation in 1987, is the Argyle mine in the remote northern section of Western Australia. Last year, it produced more than 35 million carats, though most of them were of industrial quality.
The great trading and cutting centers are just as international: New York, Antwerp, Tel Aviv, and Bombay are the primary cutting locations. They may soon have new rivals as twin moves to cut cost and build employment encourage new cutting facilities in Bangkok and even in China, which is just beginning to dabble in the art. London remains the focal trading stop.
Diamonds are hard beyond belief. It was ever so, as Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23 to 79) recorded long ago. The Greeks called diamond "adamas" or unconquerable. Pliny wrote that "the best way to test adamas is upon the anvil; strike even upon the point of the adamas with a hammer as hard as you can, it defies all blows and instead of the stone yielding, the hammer flies into pieces and even the anvil splits in half."
No one knows if Pliny was talking practice or theory, but 1,900-plus years later one thing is sure: don't even think about trying this experiment today, experts insist.
Flawless, colorless diamonds--the most perfect, desirable and, therefore, most costly--are the rarest of the rare. Of the 100 million or so carats mined each year, those in the very top grade number in the hundreds. What's more, about half of a rough diamond's total weight is lost in the cutting process.
Diamonds personify value. The luxury car, the private plane, the regal fur are all passing pleasures. Diamonds are lifelong reminders of love and attachment--and having sealed a bond for one generation, they can be passed unblemished to the next. Diamonds are forever.
Not all diamond mining is dramatic. The operation at Murfreesboro in Pike County, Arkansas, is a down home affair called Crater of Diamond. It's in the center of a state park and for more than 20 years has been "mined" by tourists who pay $3 a day for the right to dig for gems. It can be a rewarding experience. In one recent year, close to 80,000 people paid for the privilege of grubbing around the surface of the only persistent diamond mining venture in North America and took home a total of 1,400 diamonds. Most of the crystals are small. But there have been some heart-thumping exceptions--notably the 40.23-carat Star of Arkansas found in 1924 and the 32.45-carat Star of Murfreesboro found in 1964.
A geological survey of the Pike County area in 1889 noted the presence of volcanic material similar to that in which southern Africa's diamonds are found. No one paid much attention until 1906 when an enterprising prospector named John Huddleston discovered two stones which Tiffany & Co. confirmed were diamonds.
Over the next 50 years a half dozen different companies--among them the Ozark Diamond Mines Corp. and the North American Diamond Corp.--tried to mine the area. One company spent the entire year of 1948 producing diamonds valued at $948.60!
But the area is arousing serious mining interest again. A four-company group now wants to conduct a major geological survey at the mine and is willing to put up $350,000 for the test. The most optimistic forecast on what may be found: $5 billion worth of diamonds.
Getting to know about diamonds is like taking an armchair tour of some of the world's most exciting places. Today the tour can spin you to such faraway cities as London, Hong Kong, Antwerp, Tel Aviv and Kinshasa; in each a new dimension is added to diamond's story.
But it all began in India.
Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a plump, jowly Frenchman, favored exotic clothes and travel to exotic places. He was born in Paris in 1605, apprenticed to a jeweler in his youth, and set out at age 22 to become the Charles Kuralt of his day, with a dash of Marco Polo thrown in.
One of his major achievements was to bring back from India a gemstone that was to become a marvel in the decoration of French royalty and nobility--the diamond.
Virtually nothing is known of early Indian diamond mining other than it was centered between the modern cities of Hyderabad and Anantapur, about 350 miles southwest of Bombay, the present Indian "diamond capital." The most famous mine was the Golconda.
Mining was well established by the mid-seventeenth century. In a single mine, Tavernier reported, there were "about 60,000 persons at work, men, women, and children, the men being employed to dig, the women and children to carry the earth."
Indian royalty of the day relished these gemstones riches. Again, Tavernier:
"When the King seats himself upon his throne, there is a transparent jewel with a diamond pendant of 80 or 90 carats encompassed with rubies and emeralds so hung that it is always upon his eye. Upon each side of the throne are two parasols, the handles covered with diamonds. This is the [Peacock] throne which Tamerlane began and Cha-Jehan finished. It is reported to have cost 160 million Livres. Behind this is a tub where the king bathes, the outside whereof shines all over with diamonds."
India's primacy in diamond production lasted until the 1720's, when diamonds were discovered in Brazil in the state of Minas Gerais--later to become famous as one of the most gem-rich locations in the world.
A Portuguese soldier of fortune, Bernardo da Fonesco Lobo, is credited with the original find. He'd gone to Brazil in search of gold but was intrigued by some pebbles he discovered when washing the sands of the Rio dos Marinhos. Lobo had served in India and though his "pebbles" might be diamonds-- something later confirmed by authorities in Lisbon.
The mines Gerais discovered were followed by a number of finds in other states, the biggest in Bahia in 1844. In the following 20 years, production peaked and then declined rapidly.
But the Portuguese Crown had by then taken full advantage of the diamond yields. Soon after Lobo's first strike, the Crown kicked out all Brazilian gold miners and handed over the diamond concessions to a few favorites, who built a huge slave labor force to work in the mines. For this generosity to the mine owners, the Portuguese monarchs were suitably rewarded--in diamonds.
The Brazilian stones were of good quality and the country produced some 16 million carats between about 1750 and 1850. But they could not shake off the stigma that they were inferior to Indian stones.
The outcome: enterprising dealers, many of them Dutch, shipped Brazilian diamonds to Goa on India's west coast and then sold them locally as Indian goods.
Soot from a smoky candle--soft, black, opaque, so worthless it is wiped away as a nuisance. This is the element called carbon. The diamond in a queen's tiara--harder than any other natural substance, colorless, transparent, flashing with all the brilliance of fresh dew, so costly it is worth a king's ransom-- this also is carbon, nothing more, nothing less.
The difference between them is this: soot forms at ordinary temperature and pressure; diamond at a temperature and pressure so high it is equivalent to that existing 150 miles below the earth's surface.
In the stark, cavernous lobby of the US diamond industry's "home" in New York City, elevator doors bang monotonously. Throughout the day they pour out an endless army of diamond people--dealers, messengers, secretaries, cutters. Most distinctive are the Hasidic Jews with their flat-brimmed black hats, long black coats and, often, resplendent beards. This is pure New York, a kaleidoscope of color and quickly- shifting patterns. In this world the total business is trading diamonds.
Half a world away the scene is totally different. It is early morning and Rampura Main Road in Surat, India's diamond cutting center, is a spectacle of movement. Buzzing scooters, beeping taxis, ox carts that vie for inches of the narrow street, destitute men hauling bags of cement, push cart merchants and women walking with their saris ablaze in the dusty wake of passing traffic.
Around 10 a.m., just as the heat of the day takes hold, young men began collecting on the street. First by tens, then quickly by the hundreds. Within an hour, the throngs of white shirted young men have squeezed all other traffic onto different streets and the real business of Rampura Main Road begins: trading diamonds.
Geographical boundaries are irrelevant to diamond dealers. They live more in a state of mind than in a country. Similar methods of business and codes of conduct are held in equal respect in Surat and New York, in Tel Aviv and in Antwerp, in London and Los Angeles--in all the trading places of the world, whether they are street curbs or elegant office suites.
The dealer's world is his bond. Woe betide the person who cheats or lies. He will be shut out of the diamond world as absolutely as a shunned Amish sinner.
Mazel u Broche.
The Hebrew words for "luck" and "benediction" are the seal to any buying or selling. No money need change hands. The deal is made; the diamonds and money will be delivered. This extraordinary trust makes diamond trading unique.
An enterprising Texan named Sammy Collins drew worldwide attention in 1962 when he announced that he'd recovered 50,000 carats of diamonds worth $1.5 million from the seabed of the treacherous Diamond Coast of South West Africa.
Collins figured that since diamonds had been found in abundant amounts along the coast, most likely carried there by the Vaal and Orange rivers from some far inland deposit, they also ought to be found under the ocean.
Over a period of three years, Collins used the equivalent of huge vacuum sweepers to suck some 400,000 carats of diamonds from the seabed. His adventures set off a mini-rush by others to try this new type of exploration but terrible working conditions and uncertain diamonds deposits sent most into early obscurity.
Today, with improved technology, De Beers and others are once again probing the waters of the South Atlantic, bringing closer the prospect of viable undersea diamond recovery in the 1990's.
The time and place: 1919, London, the British Imperial capital city, still rejoicing over Germany's defeat in the Great War ended the previous fall.
The man: 21-year-old Marcel Tolkowsky, a student in mechanical engineering and son and grandson of Antwerp diamond cutters.
The event: creation of a new diamond cut designed to release the maximum "fire" from the heart of the stone. Young Marcel had just etched his name into diamond history with his design of the Tolkowsky cut or, as it's more often called today, the Ideal cut.
We're talking about what many experts consider the most critical of the diamond's often discussed 4 C's - cut, clarity, color, and carat weight (more on the final three later).
Cut is what turns an opaque, dullish gray pebble into a mirror of light. In its ultimate form, a finely shaped diamond is a masterpiece of mathematics, its angles precisely drawn. In a classic cut, each of the 58 facets is aligned in exact relationship to the others to achieve maximum beauty.
This is the beauty seen across a dance floor or a dining room as a brilliant flash of light, alive with a rainbow of changing colors. It's what sets the diamond apart as the paragon of gemstones. It's what makes the diamond so special, so valued.
Achieving this goal took thousands of years.
The first crude attempts to improve on nature were made in India, where it was discovered that diamond, like wood, possesses a grain and that diamond can be split or cleaved along that grain. The Indians also discovered that when two diamonds are rubbed together some of the surface of each stone will be chipped or worn away - and used this technique to give some spark and life to the rough stones.
It took many years and European know-how to move cutting beyond the state of wonder to the state of beauty.
Progress was marked by three watershed events: the late fifteenth-century discovery of Louis de Berquem of how to use a wheel impregnated with diamond dust to polish a diamond (the concept is still in use today); the seventeenth-century invention, by a Venetian lapidary named Vincent Peruzzi, of a 58 facet cut, ancestor of today's popular brilliant cut; and the eighteenth-century discovery (inventor unknown) that a diamond could be sawed. Until then, unwanted portions of a stone had to ground away, causing tremendous loss.
The cutter's art is designed to make the maximum use of light. Put simply, a brilliant-cut diamond takes in light, bends the rays, bounces them around within the stone, and then ejects them broken into the colors of the spectrum.
Just how light is broken up depends on minute differences in how a diamond is cut. A lot of differing opinion is centered on how wide the table (the flat top surface of the diamond) should be. Those who swear by the Tolkowsky or Ideal cut say the table should be 53% as wide as the overall width of the stone at its widest point. Others favor a table somewhere between 57% and 65%.
It all really comes down to a balance of "fire" versus "light". The Tolkowsky backers say his cut does a better job of breaking down light into the entire spectrum, sending back a shining rainbow of colors from the diamond. They glory in this "fire".
Those favoring a wider table insist that their cut allows the diamond to return much more "light"--as much as five times more than the Tolkowsky. This brilliance, they say, is especially stunning when seen from an angle, and that's how most people see a diamond.
Personal preferences will decide which diamond a person buys. What's really important is to understand what a critical difference a cut can make.
It's ironic that the very best color for a brilliant diamond is no color at all. The reason is simple: absence of color means no conflict to dim the beauty of the natural light entering the stone and breaking into its spectral elements--the brilliant reds and blues and violets.
The most common measure of diamond color comes from the Gemological Institute of America. The purest, colorless stone carries a D rating and this scale goes right through the alphabet to Z--designating a diamond with a strong brown cast. (The scale starts with D because at the time the system was created in the early 1950's the business was plagued with hucksters offering AA and AAA diamonds--and the GIA wanted to distance itself from this hype).
Gradations on the color scale are so precise and so minute that it's almost impossible for an untrained eye to see them. You have to go fairly far down the scale, perhaps to an I or J, before an amateur starts to pick up a yellowish tint.
Color, like the other three C's of cut, clarity, and carat weight, has a big impact on price. A D diamond costs much more than a G which is equal in every other aspect.
Colorless is ideal for a white diamond. But color in a diamond can be a blessing, if it's deep enough and attractive enough. We're talking here about what are called fancy colored diamonds. Talk about being desirable: in April 1987 at Christie's auction house in New York, an 0.95 carat fancy purplish-red diamond sold for $880,000 or $926,315 a carat!
These gems come in all colors. Among the most famous: the vibrant blue Hope, the Dresden Green, the Black Orloff (a real rarity) and the golden brown Earth Star. Today, Australia's Argyle mine is yielding some fabulous pinks.
Step into the great room housing the Smithsonian Institution's gemstone exhibit any day of the week, and you'll see a familiar scene. One display always draws a special crowd. It houses one of the most famous diamonds in the world, the Hope.
A similar story is true at the Dresden Historical Museum in Germany. Only there the display houses the Dresden Green. The common link--apart from the extraordinary beauty of their color--is that both were mined in India.
The fabled dark blue Hope is surrounded with legends of misfortune and disaster in two royal houses. This 44.52-carat diamond, now on permanent display in the Smithsonian Institution, is believed to be the larger portion of a stone originally sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668. It was stolen in 1792 during the French Revolution and never recovered. The diamond in its present form was bought in 1830 by Henry Philip Hope (for whom it is now named).
It remained in the Hope family until 1908 when it was acquired by Abdul Hamid II, Sultan of Turkey. Later owners were Pierre Cartier, Edward B. McLean (then the owner of the Washington Post) and Harry Winston, who donated the diamond to the Smithsonian in 1962.
The Dresden, a 41-carat apple-green stone, began its march to celebrity in 1743 when Frederick Augustus II of Saxony bought it at the Leipzig Fair and added it to his nation's crown jewels. The lovely, pear-shaped stone, the largest of its color in existence, continued as part of the Saxon Regalia for some 200 years but was confiscated by the Russians Trophies' Organization in 1945. The Soviets returned it two years later and it now is displayed in the Dresden Historical Museum.
A birthmark is a small, genetic quirk--an identifier that a person carries through life. The French aristocracy found them so appealing they added imitations, applying tiny beauty spots to highlight a cheekbone or dimple.
Most diamonds have birthmarks. Depending on their position within the gem, some are obvious but most are unimportant. They come in various forms--tiny carbon specks, little featherlike lines, minute bubbles and so on. In many cases they aren't visible to the naked eye.
The flawless diamond, in which no blemish of any kind can be seen even under 10 power magnification, is obviously the most sought-after stone. But these are rare indeed and priced accordingly. Just as there is a Gemological Institute of America color scale, so is there one for clarity. It starts, naturally enough, with flawless and then moves down through "very very slightly included" to "slightly included" to "imperfect"
Larisa Popugayea and Fyodor Belikov are not household Russian names but they have a special place in diamond history--on Aug. 21, 1954, they discovered a Siberian diamond field that would make their nation one of the greatest producers of all time.
The mining area in the desolate, frozen (winter temperatures drop to -140 F) province of Western Yakutia is full of diamond riches. Once the Russians determined how to mine and live under the vile weather conditions, they quickly brought a number of major mines into production. The Mir, or Peace, became the most famous.
Today Russia continues as a major producer, with much of its output made up of high-quality diamonds. The government willingly (if quietly) sends its rough diamonds into normal distribution channels. The Russians also polish some stones, and these are normally sold to the international trade through the Antwerp marketplace.
Devil Devil Spring in the hot, empty Kimberly region of Western Australia is one mysterious symbol of the difficulties facing modern diamond mining.
It is an aboriginal sacred site, a water hole used once a year for young people's initiation ceremonies. It's also smack on the fringe of the world's most productive diamond mine, the Argyle.
Back in 1982, when large-scale development of the $400 million Argyle mine was starting in the remote northwest corner of the country, planners identified 58 such sites in the mine area. Because of the delicacy of the aboriginal issue, access to critical areas was negotiated case by case. Devil Devil stays off limits to the miners; Barramundi Gap, which gave a commanding view of the mountainous terrain, was absorbed into the mine.
To an outsider, most sacred sites seem unremarkable. But at one time the entire Argyle development timetable was threatened as negotiations dragged on and on.
Elsewhere in today's diamond world, mining is beset with such difficulties, some of them extreme. Take Angola, for example. The graceful, sweeping waterfront vistas of Luanda, the capital of the former Portuguese colony, contrast sharply with the nation's diamond-producing, civil war-torn interior. Only recently has enough peace returned to allow serious prospecting to start again. In the global scheme, Angola is potentially one of the richer gem diamond producers of the future.
Next door in Botswana, today's prime gem diamond producer, there is no war. But there are natural enemies--desert, heat and a land devoid of any industrial infrastructure. In 1967, when geologists discovered the first of Botswana's three great diamond pipes at Orapa, the country was one of the world's poorest nations, subsisting on barren land with family or tribal agriculture. To open and develop a major mine was a transportation and technological marvel but, in partnership with De Beers, Botswana has now done it three times.
The chronicle is similar for most of Africa, the bountiful center of world diamond production. In Namibia a vigilantly maintained wall of sand protects an incredible seashore diamond mine from attack by the rolling, breaking seas of the South Atlantic. In Zaire, another of the world's great diamond producers, nomad tribes poach brashly in the mining areas and smuggle many thousands of carats across porous national borders.
South Africa is the granddaddy of the continent's diamond rushes. The opening of its mines, starting in the late 1860's, is the stuff of legend. Those were the rough and tumble days of riches and misery, glory and defeat, of the frail English adventurer Cecil Rhodes, of his political and business empire building-- and of the creation of diamond's most famous name, De Beers.
Today, only about 9% of all gem diamonds come from this source, making it the world's fifth largest producer.
Liz Taylor not only has an impressive list of ex-husbands; she's also right up there with royalty when it comes to owning diamonds.
Back in 1968 she bought the 33.10-carat Krupp diamond for $305,000--but the big one came the following year, thanks to Richard Burton. It didn't come easily. When a magnificent 69,42-carat diamond came on the block at Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York, two bidders quickly left the field behind: Robert Kenmore, chairman of the Kenton Corp.--which at the time owned Cartier operations in the US--and a representative of Burton's. In the end Kenmore won out with a bid of $1,050,000.
Not to be deterred, Burton then negotiated a private purchase of the stone for $1.1 million--and Liz dazzled millions of her fans when she wore what became the Taylor-Burton diamond.
She decided to sell the stone in 1978. After some on-again, off-again dealing, Liz made the sale for $2.8 million.
In 1940, a tiny nation, then known as Palestine, harassed by hostile nations and in a desperate struggle to survive, had the foresight and fortitude to establish an organized diamond industry. In its first operating year, it exported diamonds valued at $70,000.
Today Israel is an international diamond center whose annual exports have topped $2.6 billion. How it emerged as one of the world's four major cutting and trading centers and as a major exporter of polished diamonds is a story of hard work, skill and determination. The Israeli industry has had to deal with enough crises to make most business people throw in the towel, but is has always bounced back--generally stronger than ever.
It all began in a casual, haphazard way. In the summer of 1866, a water pipe leading out of a dam became stuck on the sunbaked Jacobs farm near the Orange river in South Africa, in a poor district with the bittersweet name of Hopetown. Farmer Daniel Jacobs fussed with the pipe a bit and then asked his young son Erasmus to search the veld for a thin branch to poke through it. Erasmus wandered around until he found the branch he wanted, and then sat down in the shade of a tree to rest.
Some yards away, in the glare of the sun, he noticed that a stone appeared to be blinking at him and, curious, he walked over and picked it up. It was to him, in his language, a mooi klip, a "pretty pebble." Slipping it into the pocket of his corduroy suit, he took it home to his youngest sister. She was pleased to put it among the pebbles used in a game named "Five Stones."
The children were playing this game when the local welfare officer, Schlak van Niekirk, came in about a month later. He too noticed the stone, picked it up, took it to the window and tried to scratch the pane with it. Mrs. Jacobs told him that if he fancied it he could have it. So Van Niekirk put it in his pocket and a few days later sold it for a few pounds to an Irish peddler who toured the district when he was not out shooting lions.
There is some question whether Van Niekirk knew he was selling a diamond, but Jack O'Reilly was sure he had bought one. He wrote his name carefully on his own window with the stone and then took it to Grahamstown to geologist Dr. W. Guybon Atherstone for an expert opinion. Atherstone, who let a local bishop write his name on still another window pane with it, told O'Rilley in due course that it was indeed a diamond and worth five hundred pounds, or about $2,500, and O'Rilley took it to the governor of the Cape colony, Sir Philip Wodehouse, and sold it to him for just that.
Clear, blue-white and about the size of a sparrow's egg, it weighed 21.50 carats and, as a very mooi klip indeed, attracted a lot of attention. In its home territory it had been known as the O'Reilly; when put on exhibition in Paris soon after it was called the Eureka--Greek for "I've got it."
With its exhibition the first diamond rush began.
The final C is carat weight. What is carat? The original "carat" were the seeds of a tree; on that, most experts agree. But they disagree on the type of tree, where it grows and the size of its seeds. The best guess is that the Carob tree, or Ceratonia siliqua, which is native to the Mediterranean and Near Eastern countries. Their nearly uniform weight led to their use for weighing pearls, gold and diamonds in ancient days.
To be more practical, the modern carat equals 1/142nd of an avoirdupois ounce or, in meteric terms, one fifth of a gram (200 milligrams). Each carat is divided into 100 points. Thus a diamond is described as weighing 1.32 carats--or one carat and 32 points.
How do you cut a very large piece of rough diamond?
Very carefully.
But the planning of the cutting is much more exacting than the cutting itself. It can take months of study to decide just how to strike the first blow; the goal is to have the diamond break into manageable pieces. The horrible alternative is that the crystal may shatter.
The cutter who handles the biggest pieces of rough--and they are very few and far between--is under immense pressure. The head of the Asscher Diamond Co. of Amsterdam, who was assigned the awesome task of cutting the world's largest known diamond, the 3601-carat Cullinan, had a doctor stand by when he hit the critical blow. His first attempt failed; reportedly he fainted after his second, successful, blow.
Diamond cutting in New York won international respect in 1936 when Lazare Kaplan, a legendary figure in the US industry, cut the 726-carat Jonker Diamond. He devoted almost an entire year to studying the stone, making models in both plaster and lead.
Kaplan and a number of veteran European cutters disagreed on the direction of the Jonker's grain; if Kaplan were wrong he would shatter the stone and send half a million 1936 dollars down the drain. On April 27 of that year he made his final decision, struck the cleaving knife and the Jonker "fell apart in my hand exactly as planned."
In recent times, what was first called the Zale diamond, an 890.25-carat golden yellow stone, was unveiled to the public in New York in November 1984. But it was not until 1988 that Marvin Samuels and Louis Glick, who by then owned the gem, were ready to bring to market the final product--a 407.48-carat diamond called The Incomparable. Incomparable it may be, but when it went to auction in October 1988 the owner withdrew it when the top bid attracted was $12 million.
The Cullinan is the greatest diamond of all time. It was found late one afternoon in 1905 by the superintendent of South Africa's premier mine.
In 1907, the Cullinan was sold to the Transvaal Government, which presented it to Britain's King Edward VII.
Asscher eventually shaped nine major gemstones and ninety-six smaller ones from the original Cullinan. The largest cut diamond in existance, the pear-shaped 520.20-carat Cullinan I (also called the Star of Africa) is held in the Tower of London, mounted in the Sovereign's Royal Scepter.
You've made your decision. Now it's time to buy that piece of diamond jewelry you've always wanted.
It's time to visit a reputable jeweler who can show you the best there is to see in diamond jewelry. Your jeweler can offer you selection, answer any questions you have and help you buy the diamond of your choice--one you will be proud to present as a gift or own yourself.