Beyond the Book: Famous Diamonds

 

From Blue 52

He rolled over and fished around in the nightstand. 

“What are you looking for?” Kathryn asked with a yawn as her head left his shoulder. 

“My mother’s engagement ring and wedding band. I want you to see them.”
Hank found the ring box and opened it for Kathryn.“Pretty, aren’t they?”

Kathryn pushed her hair back and studied the rings.

Elizabeth’s engagement ring, an emerald cut diamond, looked about ten carats worth of dazzle. Every available surface on the band was studded with small diamonds, as was her wedding band.

“Hank, I’ve seen pictures of jewelry like this, but I’ve never known anybody who actually owned gems of this caliber. I don’t think pretty is exactly the word I’d use to describe this jewelry. Maybe awesome or dramatic might be better.”

Ladies, I know some of you may not like to wear jewelry, but I do.  I love it, and judging by Katherine’s reaction in my excerpt from Blue 52, she likes jewelry too.  Here are a couple of famous diamonds that I think are awesome.

Cullinan Diamond

This is the largest gem diamond ever discovered. It weighed about 3,106 carats in rough form when it was found in 1905 at the Premier mine in Transvaal, South Africa. It was named for Sir Thomas Cullinan, who discovered the mine. The Transvaal government bought it and presented it to Britain’s King Edward VII. It was cut into 9 large stones and about 100 smaller ones, all flawless. They are now part of the British crown jewels. The picture is off the Great Star of Africa, one of the diamonds cut from the Cullinan. 

The Orloff

This 300 carat bluish-green diamond was found in India. It now belongs to the Russian Diamond Treasury.  People say that it was once used as the eye in a statue of Vishnu in a temple in Sriangam.It was stolen by a French deserter in the 1700’s. He sold it to an English sea captain who took it to Europe. Eventually it ended up in Amsterdam where Grigori Orloff, one of Catherine the Great’s former lovers, bought it and presented it to Catherine. She took the diamond but not Grigori.

The Centenary Diamond 

This diamond is 273.85 carats. It was discovered at the Premiere Mine in 1986. It took three years for master diamond-cutters to transform it into the world’s largest, most modern-cut, top color, flawless diamond.

Darya-ye Noor

Lots of people are interested in pink diamonds now so I thought I’d include the Darya-ye-Noor, the largest pink diamond in the world. The name means Sea of Light in Persian. The jewel’s pale pink color is among the rarest found in diamonds. It is now a part of the Iranian crown jewels.

Well, what do you think? They’re majestic for sure, but they’re so large that to me they almost don’t look real. I guess it’s just as well most of them are in some country’s crown jewels. I saw a picture of Queen Elizabeth wearing one of them. It looked fine with all of her other jewels. 

What about you? What do you think of these diamonds?