Sparkling diamonds are everyone's best friend

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 15

Sparkling diamonds are everyone' s best friend

By

MOLLY ELLIOTT

An autumn morning in London, the air so damp that even elegant Regent Street sweats clammily. A day to ask yourself why you do not dart into the nearest travel agency and book yourself a non-stop flight to New Zealand. And then I spotted it in the window of Garrard’s, the Court jewellers. A superb diamond ring, shimmering like sun in the spray of a fountain. It consisted of baguettes arranged in a lozenge round a central rose-cut stone.

The price was about $16,000, give or take the odd few cents; a Croesan sum to one who, once a year, speculates on the chances of the second favourite in the Auckland Cup at Ellerslie providing lunch money. A ring to make you

think of a place you have never been to, words you have never spoken, people you could never have hoped to meet; yet, as diamonds go, it rated as piffling stuff.

A list of the world’s most notable diamonds runs to about 250. They bear evocative names like Great Table, Black Orloff, Light of Peace, Queen of Holland, Great Chrysanthemum. Glconda d’Or, English Dresden, Idol’s Eye, Sea of Glory, Golden Pelican, Reine des Beiges, Sultan of Morocco, La Belle Helene, Yellow Goddess, Emperor Justinian, Gaby Delise, Peach Blossom, Hortensia, Princess Mathilde, Orchid, Chameleon.

Yet, official descriptions read so dully that they might as well be announcing proposals for the financial re-organisation of the White Fish Authority. Diamonds come not only in white, but also in canary, cape (yellowish), champagne, bronze, amber, honey, sherry, green, rose, grey, red, and shiny black like caviar.

They include treasures like the vivid blue Eugenie the coffee Earth Star, the brown 245-carat Carmo do Paranaiba, found in Brazil in 1937, and the 133-carat yellow Colenso which the poet, John Ruskin, presented to the British Museum in honour of his friend, John William Colenso, first Bishop of Natal, in 1887. Stolen in 1965, the diamond has never been recovered. In the seventeenth century', the diamonds belonging to India’s Moguls had earned world-wide fame, but the orange Eureka, the first found in South Africa, started the modern diamond era. A boy, Erasmus Jacobs, picked the diamond up beside the

Orange River in 1866. Even in the rough it had a value of $2500 — a formidable amount them. Parliament Buildings in Capetown now shelter this diamond, reduced to a 10.73caract cut brilliant.

Nowadays diamonds crop up ’ all over the world, like the alluvial Arc (381 caracts) found in the Vaal River in 1921; the Barkly Breakwater (109.25 carats) which was turned over during the construction of a South African harbour mole; the rose Abaete (238 carats) found in Brazil in 1926 and sold to the Paris jeweller, Fouquet. But, like so many great diamonds noone knows its present owner. Almost certainly, though, American millionares, successful British businessmen, and wealthy

Arab oil sheikhs have, with the calculating precision of corporate accountants, bought many of them as investments.

. Away back, when wealthy women wore elaborate parures embodying the fashion of London and the dignity of Empire, Bernard Oppenheimer, of the Deßeers Consolidated Mines family, paid $9600 for the Beaumont, a cleavage piece found at Windeorton, in South Africa. This stone also has disappeared. And what has become of the monster, 416.25carat Berglen, one of the largest diamonds ever found, which surfaced in the Transvaal in 1924? Who now owns the BobGove (330 carats) found at. Deiport’s Hole on the Vaal in 1908?

Tiffany and Co. bought the Dysortsville (4.33 carats), discovered in North Carolina in the 1870 s. They gave it to the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection in the Museum of Natural History, New York, from which thieves stole it in 1964, as they did the 15.37-carat Eagle, a yellowish alluvial diamond found on a Wisconsin farm in 1876. Mistaking it for a topaz, the farmer’s wife sold it to a local jeweller for $l. When Tiffany’s bought it from him for $B5O. the woman sued him unsuccessfully. Many large diamonds have split into several smaller but outstanding stones, like the 995.20carat blue-white Excelsior, the world’s biggest when it was discovered in 1893 in the Orange Free State’s Jagersfontein Mine. A native worker shovelled it up with gravel

for loading into a truck. He delivered it straight to the mine manager — an example of honesty that must surely have been appreciated in heaven because of its increasing rarity here below. His reward? A good horse with saddle and bridle and a cash payment — a small enough reward for a diamond that yielded 21 jewels ranging from one to 69.68 carats.

A poor Turk found the 24-carat Mahomet IV in a rubbish heap in the seventeenth century. He sold it for a trifle. Later, the Grand Vizier added the stone to the imperial treasure. For many years the reigning Sultan of Turkey wore the diamond with the Imperial Plume on state occasions but it, too, has disappeared.

In 1934, Jacobus Jonker gave his name to a 726carat diamond found on his farm near South Africa’s Premier Mine. He sold the stone to Johannesburg’s Diamond Corporation for $3'15,000. After its exhibition in America, it was measured, weighed, probed, poked, analysed, and dissected into numerous stones.

In 1949, King Farouk of Egypt bought the largest, which retained the Jonker name. After Farouk’s exile in 1952, the diamond vanished, but it has since been reported as belonging to Queen Ratna of Nepal.

Nevertheless, many royal jewels have vanished. Not since the sixteenth century has anyone heard of the Mirror of Naples, valued at about $37,500, which belonged to Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, married to the aged Louis XII of France. When Louis died. Mary immediately married her real love, the Duke of Suffolk, sending the diamond as a peace offering to Henry.

About the same time, the Portuguese Crown Jewels contained the Mirror of Portugal (over 25 carats). When Henry, the Cardinal King, died in 1580, Don Antonio, his illegitimate nephew, claimed the throne. Having defeated Antonio, Philip II of Spain took many of the Crown Jewels as collateral for funds to continue his war. In return for the jewels, including the Mirror of Portugal, he sought aid from Elizabeth I of England, who sent a fleet to Lisbon. Although this expedition failed, Elizabeth kept the jewels. The Mirror of Portugal

remained in the English Crown Jewels until Charles I’s reign. During the Civil War, Queen Henrietta Maria pawned many of them abroad tor funds. In 1644, she pledged the Mirror of Portugal with others to the Duke ot Epernon.

When the Queen could not repay the loans, the Duke sold the diamond to Cardinal Mazarin, who bequeathed his fabulous jewel collection to Louis XIV. In 1792, the Mirror of Portugal was stolen in the robbery ot the French Treasury and was never heard of again. The only record of it remains in Vandyke’s portrait of Henrietta Maria, now in the Hermitage in Leningrad. In the painting, the Queen wears the diamond as a brooch.

The Iranian Crown Jewels contain an extensive diamond collection, including the Taj-e-Mah (115.06 carats), a flawless white oval, mogul-cut stone, and part of Nadir Shah’s Indian plunder. In addition to the pink Darya-i-Nur (185 carats), the collection also contains the 23 Iranians — three white, one peach, and 19 yellow-ranging from 38.19 to 152.16 carats. Shah Nasir-ud-Din bought these during a European trip in 1889. Of incalculable beauty and value, these stones, each with a lively history, have caused murders, diplomatic incidents, sorrow, crimes, and have inspired superstitions, novels, and films consisting of a medley of Mafia, James Bond gadgets, karate, and car chases.

Having passed through the hands of queens, eminences, and grand seigneurs, the Iranians have scattered all over the world and now belong to owners as disparate as the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Louvre. Topk'api and Dresden Historical Museums, Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, New York’s Smithsonian Institute, the Gaekwar of Baroda, the Maharajahs of Patiala and Indore, Prince Ali Khan, Lady Lydia Deterding, the London and New York jewellery firm of Cartier, the New York and Paris jewellers, Van Clef and Arpels, actresses Greer Garson and Elizabeth Taylor, the Cuban Government, and Queen Elizabeth 11.

Nevertheless, the whereabouts of most of the world’s top diamonds remains unknown After all, who would care to advertise possession of such valuable, tempting, and dangerous treasures?