Origin of Name
The diamond which was acquired and processed by the
William Goldberg Corporation of New York in the 1990s, was originally named
the "Red Shield", but subsequently after its sale to Moussaieff Jewelers
Ltd. in the year 2001, the diamond came to be known as the "Moussaieff Red"
diamond.
Characteristics of the
diamond
The Moussaieff Red is a triangular brilliant-cut or
trilliant-cut, fancy red (ruby red), internally flawless diamond, weighing
5.11 carats. It is the largest red diamond in the world today, and its
estimated cost in the year 2002 was $ 8 million. The G.I.A. states that it
is the largest fancy red natural color diamond, that it has ever graded as
of the date the report was issued.
Being a red diamond, the Moussaieff Red is a type IIa
diamond, whose frequency of occurrence is much less than 0.1 % of all
naturally occurring diamonds.
History
The Moussaieff Red was discovered by a farmer in Brazil
in the mid-1990s. As such the diamond must have originated in the alluvial
deposits of the diamond mining areas of Brazil. In the rough state the stone
weighed 13.90 carats.
The diamond was acquired by the William Goldberg Diamond
Corporation of New York. The master cutters of the Goldberg Corporation
transformed the stone into a spectacular triangular brilliant-cut, also
known as a trilliant-cut, deep-red diamond, weighing 5.11 carats. The
diamond was given the name Red Shield by the Goldberg Corporation.
The Red Shield diamond was sold to Moussaieff Jewelers
Ltd. in the year 2001 or 2002, for a rumored $ 8,000,000, and after this
transaction the diamond was referred to as the Moussaieff Red.
The Moussaieff Red was displayed at the Natural History
Museum of the Smithsonian Institution on two recent occasions in the years
2003 and 2005.
In the year 2003, it was part of the "Splendor of
Diamonds" Exhibition, held between June 27th and September 30th, at the
Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., that also featured other famous
diamonds such as the Millennium Star, the Alnatt diamond, the Pumpkin
diamond, the Heart of Eternity, the Steinmetz Pink, and the Ocean Dream.
In the year 2005, the Moussaieff Red was part of the
"Diamonds" Exhibition held between 8th July, 2005 and 26th February, 2006, that
featured a star line-up of eight of the world's most incredible diamonds, displayed together for the first time. This included the De Beers
Millennium Star, The Steinmetz Pink, The Incomparable, the Ocean Dream, the
Moussaieff Red, the Heart of Eternity, the Alnatt, the 616 diamond (an
uncut, unnamed diamond). The exhibition also included the Eureka, the Shah
Jahaan and the Aurora Collection, a set of 296 naturally colored diamonds,
totaling a staggering 267.45 carats.
The second largest red diamond in the world, was
discovered in South Africa in 1927, and after cutting and polishing weighed
5.05 carats. The cut employed was emerald cut. This diamond had no
particular name and was simply known as the "Red diamond". The
diamond was believed to have been purchased by an anonymous diamond
connoisseur for his private collection. The present whereabouts of the
diamond is not known.
The third largest red diamond is the "De Young Red",
having a weight of 5.03 carats, and cut as a round brilliant. The red color
of this stone has a slightly brownish hue, giving it the appearance of a
Rhodolite or Allamandine garnet. In fact the stone was mistakenly sold as a
red garnet at the beginning, but later identified to be a red diamond. The
"De Young Red" is now the property of the Natural History Museum, of the
Smithsonian Institution, in Washington D.C.
In the 19th century, Edwin Streeter, a diamond dealer in
Paris, purchased a 0.95-carat, deep ruby-red diamond known as the Halphen Red. The stone
disappeared from public view and was never seen again. Almost a century
later a collector in England purchased a 0.95-carat red diamond, which came
to be known as the Hancock Red, after it's owner Warren Hancock. While there
is no proof the two diamonds are in fact the same, the rarity of the red
diamonds makes it likely they are. The extraordinarily deep ruby-red color
makes the Hancock Red exceptional among the red diamonds, even though it has
a carat weight of only 0.95 carats. The exceptional red diamond, sold
for a record price of $ 926,000 per carat at a Sotheby's auction in 1987.
Occurrence and chemistry
of red color diamonds
Colorless diamonds are the well known and most
popular diamonds in the jewelry trade. However, diamonds also occur in
different colors in nature, in almost all the colors of the rainbow. Colored
diamonds are gradually becoming more popular and are increasingly used
in jewelry settings. The large production of brown diamonds in the Argyle
mines of Western Australia, are set in jewelry and popularized as Cognac and
Champagne diamonds.
Contrary to public perception colored diamonds are more
common in nature than colorless diamonds. The commonest colors in
diamonds are yellow and brown, which account for almost 98% of all natural
diamonds. These colors are imparted by the presence of nitrogen impurities
in the diamond crystals, and are known as type I diamonds. Near colorless
diamonds with a slightly yellowish tinge also come under type I diamonds.
The next commonest are the absolutely colorless diamonds, which constitute
about 1-2 % of all naturally occurring diamonds. These diamonds are
nitrogen-free, and are known as type IIa diamonds. The remaining fancy
colors blue, green, pink, red, purple and orange are all extremely rare. It
is difficult to quantify the frequency of their occurrence, but they are
much less than 0.1 %. A statistical estimate at the Argyle mines in
Australia, has shown that only one carat of pink diamond is produced for
every one million carats of rough diamonds. This works out to an extremely
low percentage of 0.0001 %. The red diamonds produced in these mines are even
scarcer than pink diamonds. Therefore the frequency of occurrence of red
diamonds must be less than 0.0001 %. Thus red diamonds are extremely rare in occurrence.
Red diamonds are type IIa diamonds. In the absence of
nitrogen type IIa diamonds are usually absolutely colorless, but, a small
percentage of these diamonds have undergone plastic deformation in their
crystal structure as they rose from deep inside the earth, from the mantle
to the surface, during volcanic eruptions. The deformed areas in the crystal
absorb light in different regions of the spectrum imparting rare fancy
colors to the diamond, such as red, pink, purple, etc. Thus red diamonds are
plastically deformed type IIa diamonds.
The Phenomenon of red diamonds is extremely rare, so much
so, that if one says that only a very small number of natural red diamonds
exist in the world today, it is not an exaggeration. Actually the number of
diamonds certified as red, existing in the world today, is less than twenty.
Therefore, seeing a red diamond in public is an extremely rare event, let
alone being available for sale. The recorded sales of red diamonds are few
and far between. After the 1987 sale of the 0.95-carat Hancock Red diamond
for $ 880,000, the next recorded sale is that of the 5.11-carat Moussaieff
Red in 2001 for $ 8 million. This is an indisputable statistical evidence
for the rarity of the diamond.
The combined characteristics of rarity and beauty make
red diamonds the most expensive of all diamonds, and several of them are
among the most famous diamonds in the world.
Another important aspect of red diamonds is their
restricted size when compared to other colored diamonds and the colorless
D-color diamonds. The world's 1st, 2nd and 3rd largest D-color diamonds, the
Cullinan I, the Cullinan II and the the Centenary, have weights of 530.20
carats, 317.40 carats and 273.85 carats respectively. In comparison the
world's 1st, 2nd and 3rd largest red diamonds, the Moussaieff Red, the Red
Diamond and the De Young Red, have weights of 5.11 carats, 5.05 carats, and
5.03 carats respectively. In terms of size, the Moussaieff Red would not get
anywhere near the list of the world's largest diamonds, yet, it is famous
for the fact that it is red, one of the rarest colors in diamonds.
