Origin of name
The name "Blue Heart" seems to have been inspired by the
rare deep blue color of the diamond and it's extraordinarily beautiful
heart-shaped cut, that makes it perhaps the world's prettiest blue diamond.
The "Blue Heart" diamond is sometimes known as the "Unzue" diamond, after
the Argentinean woman Mrs. Unzue who owned the diamond for 43 years, having
purchased it from Cartier's in 1910, two years after it's discovery. The
diamond is also mistakenly referred to as the "Eugenie Blue," after Empress
Eugenie of France, the empress consort of Napoleon III (1852-1870), but she
could never have owned this diamond because it was discovered only in 1908.
©Smithsonian
institution, photo by Chip Clark
Characteristics of the
diamond
The Blue Heart diamond is a 30.62-carat, heart-shaped,
blue diamond. The color grade of the diamond is not known, but the color is
variously referred to as dark blue, deep blue, steel blue etc. However, if
one goes by the appearances of the diamond, it may qualify as a fancy
intense blue or fancy vivid blue, according to the GIA color grading system.
The "Blue Heart" diamond is the 5th largest blue diamond
in the world according to the list of known famous blue diamonds. See table
below.
List of famous blue
diamonds
|
S/N |
Name |
carat weight |
color |
|
1 |
Hope diamond |
45.52 |
fancy dark grayish blue |
|
2 |
Tereschenko |
42.92 |
fancy blue |
|
3 |
Wittelsbach |
35.56 |
fancy intense blue |
|
4 |
Sultan of Morocco |
35.27 |
fancy grayish blue |
|
5 |
The Blue Heart |
30.82 |
fancy intense blue |
|
6 |
The Heart of Eternity |
27.64 |
fancy vivid blue |
|
7 |
Transvaal Blue |
25.00 |
unknown color grade |
|
8 |
The Blue Empress |
14.00 |
unknown color grade |
|
9 |
The Blue Magic |
12.02 |
fancy vivid blue |
|
10 |
Graff Blue |
6.19 |
fancy blue |
The Blue heart diamond is a rare Type IIb diamond, and
all naturally colored blue diamonds belong to this group. However, the
occurrence of these diamonds is much less than 0.1 % of all natural
diamonds. Type II diamonds are nitrogen-free or contain undetectable
quantities of nitrogen.
If the diamonds are not only nitrogen-free but free
of all other chemical impurities, they are known as Type IIa, which
constitute about 1-2 % of all naturally occurring diamonds. However, instead
of nitrogen, if they contain trace quantities of another impurity boron, the
diamonds are known as Type IIb. Boron atoms incorporated in the crystal
structure of the diamond, changes it's absorption spectrum imparting the
blue color to the diamonds. The diamonds also become semi-conducting, unlike
other diamonds which are non-conductors of electricity.
The Blue Empress with the Shepard, Eugenie and other
diamonds.
©Smithsonian
institution, photo by Chip Clark
History
The Blue Heart diamond certainly did not belong to
Empress Eugenie of France, but undoubtedly there is a French
connection to this diamond, as the rough diamond was cut and polished, and
transformed into it's modern heart-shaped form by the renowned French
diamond cutting firm, Atanik Ekyanan of Neuilly, Paris between 1909 and
1910. Previously the origin of the diamond was uncertain, and thought to be
either India or South Africa, even though by the beginning of the 20th
century, most of the historical diamond mines of the Eastern Deccan Plateau
in India were already abandoned.
The Blue Empress set in a platinum ring, surrounded by 25
white diamonds.
However, this mystery has been solved and more
information about the diamond has been unearthed, thanks to the untiring
efforts of the dedicated scientists of the Natural History Museum of the
Smithsonian Institution, the present owners of the diamond. The researches
went into the archives of De Beers, and unearthed evidence to show that the
diamond was discovered in the Premier diamond mines of South Africa, in
November, 1908, and the rough stone weighed 102 carats. The rough stone was
eventually cut and polished in Paris as stated earlier and sold to
Cartier's, who set the diamond in a "Lily of the Valley" corsage and sold it
to an Argentinean woman Mrs. Unzue. The diamond remained in the Unzue family
until 1953, when it was purchased by the jewelry firm Van Cleef & Arpels,
who dismantled the corsage setting, and re-set the diamond in a pendant,
surrounded by 25 colorless or white diamonds. The pendant and the
accompanying necklace was priced at $ 300,000, and was sold to an unnamed
European titled family. In 1959, Harry Winston acquired the diamond, and
re-set it again in a platinum ring and sold it to Marjorie Merriweather
Post. The diamond remained with Mrs. Post until the 1960s, when she finally
decided to donate the rare blue diamond to the Natural History Museum of the
Smithsonian Institution, at Washington DC, where it is on display in the
Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals, in the National
Museum of Natural History.
Natural blue diamonds surpass all other gemstones for
their sheer beauty, and it is this uniqueness in their beauty combined with
their rarity, that make them the most sought after diamonds by collectors
and connoisseurs, around the world. The sale of a rare fancy vivid blue
diamond weighing 6.04 carats at a Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong, on October
8, 2007, for a record-breaking price of 7.98 million, therefore comes as
little surprise to those in the trade and the well informed. The $ 1.32
million per carat price of this diamond has broken the 20-year old world
record, set by the Hancock Red (Halphen Red) diamond in 1987, which sold at
$ 926,000 per carat. The diamond is reported to have been purchased by
Moussaieff Jewelers of London, who in 2001 purchased another extremely rare
5.11-carat red diamond known as the "Red Shield," for an undisclosed amount,
from the William Goldberg Corporation of New York. The Red Shield was
subsequently re-named the "Moussaieff Red," which is the largest red diamond
in the world.
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