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The Blue
Hope Diamond The
Hope Diamond is a large, 45.52-carat, deep blue diamond, currently
housed in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in the U.S. capital,
Washington, D.C.. The diamond is legendary for the curse it supposedly
puts on whoever possesses it. The Hope Diamond appears to be a brilliant
blue to the naked eye because of trace amounts of boron within the
diamond. The Hope Diamond exhibits red phosphoresence under ultraviolet
light and is classified as a Type IIb diamond.
The Hope Diamond originates from the Tavernier
Blue, which was originally mined at the Kollur mine in Guntur district
Andhra Pradesh, India which at that time was a part of the Golconda
kingdom. It was a crudely cut triangular shaped stone of 115 carats
(22.44 g). French merchant-traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier purchased it
sometime in 1660 or 1661. According to "legend", the Tavernier Blue had
been stolen from an eye of a sculpted idol of the Hindu goddess Sita,
the wife of Rama, the Seventh Avatara of Vishnu -- however, much like
the "curse of Tutankhamun", this "legend" was unknown before it was used
as a plot device in some early 20th century novels and a 1921 movie. In
1668, Tavernier sold the diamond to King Louis XIV of France. Sieur
Pitau, the court jeweller, cut it and produced a 67 1/8 carat (13.4 g)
stone.
The stone became known as the Blue Diamond of
the Crown or the French Blue. It was set in gold and suspended on a neck
ribbon for the King to wear on ceremonial occasions. In 1749, King Louis
XV had it set on his pendant for the Order of the Golden Fleece. After
his death, it fell into disuse. When Louis XVI of France became king, he
gave the diamond to Marie Antoinette to add to her collection of
jewelry. During the French Revolution, while Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette were held in prison, the pendant with the diamond was stolen
on September 11, 1792, when six men broke into the house used to store
the crown jewels. It is believed that one of the robbers was a cadet
Guillot, who took it to Le Havre along with the Gôte de Bretagne spinel
and then to London where he tried to sell the jewels.
In 1796, apparently seriously in debt, the
story goes that he handed the gem to Lancry de la Loyelle, who had
Guillot put into prison for his trouble. There is no record of what had
happened to the diamond after that. The Hope diamond was recorded in the
possession of a London diamond merchant Daniel Eliason in September
1812, which marks the earliest point that the exact history of the Hope
Diamond can be definitively fixed. This diamond was generally believed
to have been cut from the French Blue, a fact which was finally verified
in 2005[3]. It is often pointed out that the Hope Diamond came into
recorded history almost exactly 20 years after the theft of the French
Blue, just as the statute of limitations for the crime had expired. It
is believed that it may have been acquired by King George IV of the
United Kingdom, although there is no record of the ownership in the
Royal Archives at Windsor.
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more... (External Link)
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World's Largest Diamonds - The Blue Hope
