BUTCHERING BIG DIAMONDS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 27, 14 January 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

BUTCHERING BIG DIAMONDS.

Perhaps the most striking fact in connection with the r cent re opening of the Jewel Room in the Tower of I/ ndon, is that the great Cullinan diamond, the most valuable, and once the biggest brilliant in the world, is now no longer in existence. Split info fragments, its very name has been—officially, at all events—conrigned to oblivion. The two largest portions are now known as the “Stars of Africa.” and have gone to adorn the crown and the sceptre respectively. The ether very much smaller pieces, mere chips from the cuttings, have been utilised in the regalia in other wavs, and have largely’ lost their identity.

It has been the same with many historic diamonds in the past. Indeed, people owning thes? treasures seem often to be possessed by a perfect mania for altering their size and shape: sometimes, as in the case of the Cullinan, bv slicing them in halves, but more frequently by re-cutting them.

In this latter way the Koh-i-noor •has been redueed from 800 carats to a trifle over 100; seven-eighths of the gem, in other words, hiving been whittled and ground away at different periods by its various ow ners. In the same way the maguificentRajah of Mattan diamond has Tieon reduced front 787 carats to 367. the Pitt or Regent diamond from 410 to 136, and the Star of the South from 2-54 to 127; while the Tavernier, the first blue diamond seen in Eurone, was deliberately sawn in halves, like th? Cullinan. Of course, the idea in dealing in this way with these ccstly gems is to increase their beauty, and thereby their value. But the desired result is not always obtained. Experts are agreed, for instance, that Hortensio Borghese, the A’cnetian lapidary who first cut the -Koh-i-ncor, thereby reducing it from 800 to 279 carats, bungled his work so liadlv as to reduce the value of the jewel by more than two-thirds.