Famous Diamonds I

The Heart of Eternity diamond was found by an alluvial digger in the early nineties in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was purchased by a De Beers buyer on the open market. Cutting and polishing took more than three years.

The "Dresden Green" diamond preserved in the "Green Vaults" of Dresden is the most famous green diamond known. It has a fine apple-green color, perfectly transparent, almond shaped in form and weighs about 40 carats. Since 1748 it has been the property of the Saxon Crown. It is said August the Strong paid 60000 thalers to acquire it.

The best known yellow diamond “The Tiffany” was found in the De Beers mine at Kimberly in 1878 and weighed 287.42 carats. The following year it was bought by Charles Lewis Tiffany and was cut in Paris as a cushion-shaped brilliant with 90 facets. The Tiffany Yellow is one of the largest yellow diamonds in existence. It remains on permanent display on the ground floor of the Tiffany & Co. store in New York City.

The "Great Chrysanthemum" weighing nearly 104 carats is a pear shaped diamond cut from 198.28 carat brown rough found in South Africa in 1963. Julius Cohen, a New York City dealer, bought the rough and had it cut to reveal the diamond's rich golden-brown, chrysanthemum-like color.

The Moussaieff Red Diamond is 5.11 carats with a triangular brilliant cut, rated in color as Fancy Red and it is the world's largest known red diamond. The Moussaieff Red was discovered in the 1990s by a Brazilian farmer in the Abaetezinho river in 1990, in a region known as Alto Paranaiba. The rough stone weighed 13.9 carats.