Discovery Talismans Louis de Berquen of Bruges - 1476 Tavernier The Great Moguls The Hope Diamond Brazil in the 1730's South Africa in the 1860's Tiffany & Company, 1874 The Pinks Color Collectors Rainbow Collection - 1981 Butterfly of Peace Collection The DeBeers Collection The Townsend Collection Aurora Pyramid of HopeDiscovery
Diamonds were first discovered in India, perhaps as long as five thousand years ago. It is believed that the Koh-i-noor, one of the world's greatest diamonds, was worn nearly five hundred hears ago by Babur, the first Mobul emperor of India. The best diamonds remained in India - the pure, colorless specimens set aside for the Brahmins who, thus, became the first collectors of these precious stones.
back to top
Talismans
At first, diamonds were regarded as talismans to protect the wearer against evil. They were also used as a medium of exchange.
back to top
Louis de Berquen of Bruges - 1476
In the twelfth century the development of optics based on Euclid's treatise eventually led to an understanding of how to facet diamonds to bring out their hidden beauty to the fullest. Official credit for the firs t scientific cutting of diamonds is generally given to Louis de Berquen of Bruges who, in 1476, faceted the three biggest diamonds in the collection of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. It was he who cut the famous yellow diamond that many believe to be the Florentine, weighing 137.27 carats. The stone eventually came into the hands of the Medici family in Florence, where the French traveler and diamond merchant, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, saw it in 1657 in the possession of the grand duke of Tuscany.
back to top
Tavernier
The name Tavernier is closely linked with diamonds because he traveled to India in the mid-seventeenth century, providing the first descriptions of the diamond operation in that country. On each of his many journeys, he purchased diamonds outright or resorted to trading his European wares, emeralds, and pearls to get the best stones, eventually bringing back to France enough diamonds to win a barony from a grateful Louis XIV.
back to top
The Great Moguls
In 1665, Tavernier visited the last of the great Moguls, Aurangzeb. Among this great ruler's collection of gemstones, Tavernier saw his most prized possession, a 280-carot diamond known as the Great Mogul. Tavernier called it "the great diamond." Much history and mystique followed the Great Mogul. It has been speculated that, because of the similarity in shape and color (faintly bluish-green), it must be the same stone known today as the Orlov, which Count Grigori Orlov presented to Catherine the Great of Russia in 1775. This stone weighing 189.6 carats, resides in the collection of the Kremlin State Museum.
back to top
The Hope Diamond
Arguably, the most famous of all colored diamonds, the Hope has had an illustrious and somewhat controversial history, which also starts with Tavernier. A 45.5 carat diamond endowed with a unique dark blue hue, it is believed to have been initially cut from a 112-carat stone that Tavernier brought back from India for Louis XIV in 1668. It was recut in 1673 into a 69-carat triangular-shaped stone and remained as a part pf the French crown jewels during the reigns of kings Louis XV and XVI, so we can speculate that it was handled by Queen Marie Antoinette, among others.
The hope was stolen from the French crown jewels in 1792, only to resurface many years later in London as a 45.5 carat cushion-shaped stone. When it was put up for sale there around 1824, a banker, Henry Philip Hope purchased it for his collection. This diamond remained in the Hope family for seventy-seven years and was subsequently acquired by Ms. Evelyn Walsh McLean of Washington D.C.
The noted New York jeweler, Harry Winston, purchased the stone in 1949 and presented it to the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., in 1958.
back to top
Brazil in the 1730's
Coinciding with the decreasing supply of diamonds mined in India, a new source was discovered I Brazil in 1730 (local reports point to actual discovery sixty years earlier, when diamonds were found mixed in with gold washings). Since at that time, Brazilian stones did not have a reputation to match those from India, it was necessary for many years to ship them to Goa, a Portuguese possession in India, from where they would be shipped to Europe endowed with their new 'provenance." By the 1870's this new source was eclipsed by the discoveries in South Africa.
back to top
South Africa in the 1860's
Diamonds were found in South Africa in the late 1860's. The first find recorded was a 21-carat yellow diamond crystal, found but the son of a Boer farmer. After changing hands many times, it was displayed at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris where it captivated all who came to see it. It was subsequently cut to a 10.73 carat brilliant and appropriately named Eureka. DeBeers later presented this diamond to the parliament of South Africa in Cape Town.
back to top
Tiffany & Company, 1874
Tiffany & Company gained experience purchasing important diamonds, as is evident from their acquisition, in 1874, of the 30-carat Brunswick Yellow Diamond, of Indian origin, that had been in the collection of the "jewel mad" Duke of Brunswick, the quintessential diamond collector of the nineteenth century.
back to top
The Pinks
Until recently, pink diamonds were found in small quantities, first in India many centuries ago and later in Brazil and South Africa. The majority of these stones was very pale, and thus, classified as "faint" or "light" in terms of saturation. The few with significant color were called "fancy light pink." For this reason, pinks were considered among the rarest of all diamond colors. The discovery of the Argyle pipe in the western region of Australia in 1979 changed this situation dramatically. A selection of Argyle pinks were so saturated that they earned the designation of "fancy." In April 1989, sixteen of these stones were offered at auction at a Christie's New York sale, realizing above-estimate prices.
back to top
Color Collectors
Prior to 1900, there have been only a handful of individuals, such as the Duke of Brunswick, who systematically colleted colored diamonds. The first collector of note in the twentieth century was Atanik Eknayan, a diamond cutter from Paris. When he exhibited this collection of diamonds of over 70 different hues at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, held in St. Louis in 1904, it became the firs public display of an assortment of colored diamonds.
In the last twenty years, several collectors assembled important collections of colored diamonds, which have been exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. These include Andre Gumuchian's collection of 41 colored diamonds, on view from May 1976 through June 1986. Known as the Spectrum Collections, it comprised natural, intense, and rare color diamonds ranging in size from 0.20 to 6.86 carats, and weighing an aggregate of 63.89 carats. It remained a popular exhibit for the ten years it was on view, and according to Dr. George Harlow at the museum, "At the time, it was the best on public display."
back to top
Rainbow Collection - 1981
In 1981, the Rainbow Collection was exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles, the Academy of Science in San Francisco, the Antique Dealers and Jewelers Biennial Fair in Paris and Province House in Antwerp. This collection, put together by Eddie Elzas, a dealer from Antwerp, comprised 301 diamonds. Elzas' concept was to collect pairs of stones of similar color, size, and shape. Many diamond dealers believe that both the Spectrum and Rainbow Collections are no longer in tact.
back to top
Butterfly of Peace Collection
Over the last 12 years, Alan has also curated the unique Butterfly of Peace Collection. This outstanding work of art is an abstract arrangement of 240 natural colored diamonds of all color varieties in the design of a butterfly. The collection weighs 166.94 carats. It was exhibited at the Houston Museum of science from July 1994 through January 1996 and traveled to Japan in 2000.
back to top
The DeBeers Collection
The DeBeers Collection, assembled for display at diamond industry events, consists of an assortment of colored diamonds from South African mines. DeBeers does not promote coloured diamonds because of the fact that they are so rare and the supply is very limited. De Beers, who own or control about half the world's diamond mines and marketing, have their own collection of natural fancy coloured diamonds, which they exhibit for themselves, and are not for sale.
back to top
The Townsend Collection
The Townsend Collection of eight small colored diamonds is on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
back to top
Aurora Pyramid of Hope
By far, the most impressive of the contemporary colored-diamond collection is the 260-Aurora Pyramid of Hope, assembled by Alan Bronstein, the New York diamond trader, and his partner and mentor, Harry Rodman. Bronstein began collecting these precious stones because of their sheer beauty and because they seemed to "talk" to him, a phenomenon that seems to afflict all great collectors. What started as a love affair with colored diamonds evolved into a comprehensive assembly of stones spanning a broad spectrum of colors over wide ranges of saturations, sizes, and shapes. It is arranged within a triangular space inspired by the form of a pyramid, so as to guide the eye of the viewer progressively from the apex to the lower positions. It has been on view at the American Museum of Natural History since 1989, to great acclaim by the visiting public. The display of this collection at the museum's Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems is also the longest-running exhibition of colored diamonds in the world.
back to top