Hello everyone, welcome to the first episode of “Tea & Gemstones”, I’m your host, Jen. This is a podcast for spilling the tea about cultural trends and history about all things sparkly.
Today we’re talking about famous brightly colored diamonds.
I have a young daughter who is obsessed with all things rainbow and diamonds are unquestionably the most well-known gemstone in the world… so I thought it a perfectly fitting subject to kick us off.
Roy G Biv is a mnemonic for the colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. For the sake of talking about diamonds I’m going to group indigo & violet into “purple.” So we’re doing ROY G BP today.
After we traipse across the rainbow, I’m going to do a later episode about the other colors- white, pink, black and brown.
So. What is a diamond anyway?
Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring substance on earth. Their name comes from the Greek word “-adamas” which means “unconquerable.” But this indominable creation consists of only one element: carbon. Crystallized carbon to be exact. According to The National Institute of General Medical Sciences, human beings are approximately 18.5% carbon. Humans really adore diamonds; we connect to diamond’s strength and beauty and have been seeking to personify those characteristics in ourselves (just ask Rihanna) since diamonds were first discovered… which as a history side note- was in India in the 4th century BC. And fancy colored diamonds have most passionately captured people’s hearts (and their wallets). Alright.
Let’s dive into the rainbow.
Red.
What a way to kick off the list. Red is the rarest color for a diamond. They just do not exist in any kind of quantity. There are so few red diamonds the Gemological Institute of America, or GIA (I’ll cite them a lot, they are the highest authority on gemstones in America) issued a report in 2017 reviewing their own records to show over a 30-year period from 1957–1987, not a single GIA lab report with the color assignment “red” was issued for a diamond. Out of millions of diamonds… no reds.
Red diamonds DO exist though. Brace yourself… the GIA has records of approximately 20-30 red diamonds in existence. 20 to 30, total. Almost every single one of those red diamonds are under half a carat in weight. Here’s some staggering perspective; worldwide diamond reserves are estimated at approximately 1.2 billion carats. Of which… about 30 carats are red. Red diamonds are REAL RARE.
There is one red diamond of substantial enough size to be ‘named.’ Famous and significant gemstones often are named, like the Hope Diamond, the Heart of the Ocean- who we’ll visit when we get too ‘Blue’ on our rainbow journey. Our red diamond with its own pronoun is the Moussaieff Red Diamond, or the Red Shield Diamond. It is 5.11 carats cut in a modified brilliant trillion- basically a sparkly fat triangle. The rough stone was found by a farmer in Brazil in 1989. It was cut into its triangle shape and named the Red Shield until it was purchased by an Israeli jeweler in 2002 who gave the stone his own surname, which I guess you’re allowed to do when you buy slash adopt the world’s rarest diamond for an undisclosed amount.
The Moussaieff Red is worth between $7 and $20 million and granted that is a huge range but there are no comps for this, nothing to compare it too. I highly recommend a google images search, but don’t body shame it, it’s a chubby little triangle, it looks pretty cute for how all alone among its kind it is.
Orange.
Orange diamonds are certainly hard to come across in everyday life, but unlike reds, it is not impossible. The GIA recognizes 7 different color combinations of diamonds grades involving orange. I won’t rattled them all off to you because they’re not super catchy, how would you like an officially titled “Yellowish-Orange” or “Orangish-Yellow”. Yes- those are two of the official 7 designations and apparently they are unique from each other. A gemologist studies a stone for days sometimes weeks making the color designation which can make a difference of millions of dollars.
What the GIA having 7 color combo designations tells me is that a quantity of orange diamonds exists to necessitate those distinctions. You know how many distinctions there are for red? One. Red. So there you go. Orange diamonds are orange because of a specific amount of nitrogen present while they are forming; nitrogen is responsible for yellow diamonds’ hue as well.
There are two famous named Orange diamonds. Neither one of them have particularly revolutionary names- the first is called the Pumpkin Diamond. Orange diamonds are usually small in carat weight, with almost all specimens under 6 carats. The Pumpkin Diamond clocks in 5.54 carats. Ronald Winston (the son of Harry Winston- the high luxury jewelers) bought the stone in 1997 at auction house Christies (can’t really talk about famous diamonds without mentioning Christie’s, most of the named stones have passed across it’s auction block once if not multiple times) for about $3 million. He set the Pumpkin Diamond in a ring, and you can peep it’s orangey self sparkling away on Halle Berry’s finger in 2002 when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Now the second named orange diamond makes me laugh. First off, it has the amazing name of The Orange. And while all previous known orange diamonds were under 6 carats, in 2013 this 14.82 Fancy Vivid orange diamond in a perfect pear shape appears from a private anonymous collector who had it hidden away for 30 years. The gem world had never seen such a thing before. I guess that’s why they were too shocked to name it something other than…. The Orange. The Orange went to Christie’s auction house, who estimated the stone would sell for $17 million dollars. Well, staying on trend for the Orange’s life, it went from one anonymous collector to another- an unknown buyer snagged The Orange for a whopping $35.5 million dollars, 2.4 million per carat. The international head of Christie’s Jewelry Department, Francois Curiel put out a statement after the sale calling The Orange “a miracle of nature.” Unfortunately that miracle now resides in secrecy somewhere in the world. Maybe one day it will reemerge to bask us with it’s orange glow and hopefully be designated with a more appropriately reverent moniker.
Yellow.
Ah, the cheerful happy yellow diamond. So diamonds are composed of carbon atoms, laid out in a crystal lattice. When they are pure carbon, they are colorless. Nitrogen is the genesis of yellow diamond’s internal sunshine. Nitrogen atoms are very small and able to slip in amongst the carbon atoms. Just 1 nitrogen atom among 100,000 carbon atoms can impart a yellow hue. This happens enough that yellow diamonds can claim the contradictory title of “most common of the rare.” 60% of all fancy colored diamonds in existence are yellow.
Yellow diamonds for me are synonymous with Tiffany & Co. I’m aware of the power of marketing… This is no doubt because the most famous yellow diamond in the world bears the name “The Tiffany Yellow Diamond.” You probably have recently seen this stone in your Instagram feeds dangling seductively down the back of Beyoncé in Tiffany’s new ad campaign released in August this year. But this stone has been generating Likes for over 142 years. In 1879 Charles Tiffany bought the rough stone from a mine in South Africa. It took over a year for the masterpiece to be cut into a one of a kind, get ready for this title: ‘modified antique cushion brilliant’ whew- weighing in at a staggering 128.54 carats. It has been featured in several designs for the jewelry house but currently stars as the focal point at the end of a necklace of over 100 carats of white diamonds and platinum. The Tiffany Diamond is supposedly worth $30 million dollars, but Tiffany & Co. has stated it will never ever be sold… making this rock of sunshine completely priceless.
Green.
Deep in the earth over the billions of years of diamonds being made, a very few of the crystalizing carbon stones were exposed to radioactive materials. The gamma rays or other radioactive particles actually knocked a few carbon atoms away, creating little color holes that absorb all red and blue light leaving behind only… green. Sweeping away on our rainbow journey from the more accessible yellows, the green diamonds are truly few among many.
The GIA has records of only approximately 300 vivid green diamonds over 1 carat in size and only 10 over 3 carats. The largest vivid green diamond to be auctioned is the Aurora Green diamond, a 5.03-carat fancy vivid green diamond that sold at Christies for $16.8 million, or $3.5 million per carat. But there is one outlier- green diamonds do have a sizable representative in existence. It is a goliath compared to all other known greenies: a stunning 41 carat rock that is cut in a slightly pot-bellied modified pear shape, the Dresden Green is a stone that sits nestled among 411 white diamonds in what can only be described as the most audacious bobby pin of all time.
Yes, get this- so this stone was first brought to the world’s attention in 1722 when a London newspaper wrote an article about it being found in India. 20 years later in 1742, the King of Poland buys the stone (we don’t know for how much) and he has the one-of-a-kind green diamond set in this super elaborate- the history books call it a “hat ornament”. It like a brooch that clips to a hat or hair. It’s the world’s most expensive bobby pin, I say. The Dresden Green wasn’t called the Dresden Green back then- we don’t know what they called it. It took on the name Dresden Green because it eventually found its way into living in the residence of the Dresden Vault in Dresden, Germany where it has lived for 300 years. In a bizarre twist of fate- on November 25, 2019 when thieves broke into the Vault and stole countless treasures- some estimates place the value of the theft at over one billion dollars, and the thieves were never caught!- but when the thieves went after the Dresden Green in it’s home of over 300 years… it wasn’t there. It was in the second floor gallery of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan for an exhibition. So the ultra-exclusive green diamonds still have their mighty representative on the world stage.
Blue.
When the element of boron decides to move in and live inside a crystalizing carbon structure the result is a beautiful blue diamond. Blue diamonds are interesting because while they occur in nature with very little frequency… when they do appear they tend to be much larger than reds, oranges or greens. There are several Top Ten lists for famous blue diamonds- which by now should kind of surprise you, since like red diamonds have… one named stone. Oranges have two… Blue has a double digits of top stones. But none are more a part of pop culture than the Hope Diamond.
Considered to the most famous diamond in the world- The Hope Diamond is actually the first known blue diamond to ever be found. Talk about peaking early. We first have a record of its sale in 1666. I think I will have to do a deep dive on the Hope Diamond because it has lived a soap opera life- it’s been owned by kings, sultans, lords, it’s been stolen and recovered, some reports say three different times. The 45.52 carat “walnut shaped” stone has lived in at least half a dozen countries and when Harry Winston, the owner of the stone in 1958 decided to donate it to the National Museum of Natural History… he sent the Hope Diamond in the mail. I mean, it was technically registered mail, but still. Just through the postal service. He insured the box for $1 million dollars which cost Mr. Winston $2.44 at the post office. Today the diamond is insured for $250 million. The Hope Diamond inspired a modern piece of pop culture in 1997 with James Cameron’s “the Titanic” which featured the lust worthy blue diamond Heart of the Ocean, a fictional necklace that ultimately (spoiler alert)- got dropped into the sea to live its days beneath the waves. But the Hope Diamond is much more accessible than this, it’s the most easily seen of any of these famous stones- anyone from the public can go and visit it on display at the Smithsonian.
Purple.
Purple diamonds are few and far to find, much like red diamonds. Purple diamonds are born when a diamond’s crystal structure ‘bends’ or warps due to what is called ‘plastic deformation’. Basically the newborn forming diamond was subject to intense stress and the neat and orderly carbon structure melts or sags a little. The resulting deformed areas of the crystal can reflect and absorb the light spectrum leaving the stone purple. It is a not well understood process- this plastic deformation of diamonds- and scientists can’t even really replicate it in a lab.
As for coming out of the earth- it doesn’t happen often. The GIA records 12 total carats of new mined purple diamonds discovered in the past 32 years, with only 100 carats recorded in the GIA’s history. Purple diamonds are firmly in the realm of collectors, not the everyday woman- unless you are Vanessa Bryant- who famously was gifted a $4 million purple diamond ring from Kobe Bryant. There are no famous named purple diamonds, the few sizable stones that could possibly rise to pronoun status emerged onto the world stage only briefly and then disappeared. A 7.34-carat fancy vivid purple diamond called the Royal Purple Heart was the best candidate to perhaps become famous and live in a museum as a representative of purple on the diamond rainbow. However, the mysterious stone is an enigma; most famous diamonds are named after their owners or where they are mined, but no such demographics were provided, so the Royal Purple Heart was monikered after the stone’s color and cut. This company that handles diamond through the production process- Julius Klein Diamond corporation- they provided the heart shaped stone to the GIA for it’s grading. They didn’t provide any info about where it came from. People freaked out- here’s the largest purple diamond ever found! Many gemologists called for this extremely rare stone to be exhibited. But it was quickly purchased by an unknown collector for an unknown amount of money and vanished from public purview. The Royal Purple Heart has not been seen since 2002.
There we are. A rainbow of famous diamonds.
Red- The Moussaieff Red, a 5.11 carat chubby triangle with no comparable equal
Orange- represented by the so basically named, but utterly exceptional in appearance, The Orange, a 14 carat pear stone sold for $35 million and promptly vanished from public view as quickly as it suddenly appeared on the gem scene.
Yellow- the iconic Tiffany Yellow Diamond, this 128 carat one of a kind stone continues to be a part of the modern world- on Lady Gaga’s neck at the Academy Awards, or on Beyonce’s back on Instagram. It periodically goes on display at Tiffany & Co.’s flagship store in New York City, you can walk in and look at it, no museum ticket required.
Green- the world’s most impressive bobby pin- sorry, “hat ornament”- the Dresden Green is a 41 carat one-of-a-kind stone that if you ever make it over to Dresden Castle in Germany- it is there for the public to see.
Blue- our hearts will go on- the Hope Diamond’s life story definitely warrants its own deep dive down into it’s ocean depths- oh wait- that’s just me describing it’s stunning dark sea blue color that has driven men and women throughout history to do some crazy things. For now the 45 carat Hope Diamond lives in the Smithsonian to inspire and amaze.
Purple- to see a purple diamond, you’re going to have to go to Google images… you can search for the Royal Purple Heart, a uniquely cut, uniquely hued 7 carat purple stone that blink-and-you-missed-it graced the gem world in the early 2000s.
I hope you enjoyed this venture across the rainbow with me!
EPISODE BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Huxley, Sophia. “Red Diamonds: Beautiful and Rare Stones.” Clean Origin Blog, 17 July 2021, www.cleanorigin.com/blog/red-diamonds.
King, Hobart. “Yellow Diamonds: The Most Valuable and Beautiful Yellow Gems.” Geology.Com, 2021, geology.com/diamond/yellow-diamonds.
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“Purple Diamond Buying Guide: History, Quality, Best Purple Diamond Engagement Rings | RockHer.” RockHer, 2020, www.rockher.com/how-to-buy-purple-diamonds.
"Red Diamonds – The Rarest of them All". GIA.edu. Gemological Institute of America. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
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Scarratt, Kenneth; Shor, Russell (2006). "The Cullinan Diamond Centennial: A History and Gemological Analysis of Cullinans I and II". Gems & Gemology.
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“The Tiffany Diamond | Tiffany & Co.” Tiffany & Co., 2021, www.tiffany.com/high-jewelry/the-tiffany-diamond.
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Volandes, Stellene. Jewels That Made History: 101 Stones, Myths, and Legends. Rizzoli, 2020.