The world’s largest top-color diamond

The Centenary Diamond was recovered at Premier Mine (DeBeers) in times od centenary celebrations of DeBeers, hence it beautiful name. The raw diamond was perfect 599 carat, The Centenary was found on July 17th, 1986 by the electric X-ray recovery system at the Premier Mine and it’s presence was kept as Top Secret.

No more fitting way of celebrating 100 years of achievement by De Beers could have been devise than the discovery of such a diamond and nowhere was it more likely to have been recovered than at the Premier Mine. Over the years this extraordinary mine has produced several outstanding diamonds of the most superb color, which have been cut into famous gems: The Cullinan in 1905; the Niarchos in 1954; the Taylor-Burton in 1966 and the Premier Rose in 1978. Now that the second millennium has ended, it is interesting to reflect that only nineteen gem-quality diamonds larger than the Centenary rough have been found during its course. The Premier Mine itself has produced nearly three hundred stones weighing more than 100 carats, and a quarter of the world’s diamonds weighing more than 400 carats.

Cutting the Centenary

The first step before the diamond could be faceted was the elimination of large cracks from the edge of the stone running a considerable depth inside it. He decided not to saw or cut with a laser because both methods would heat or vibrate the diamond. Instead, he turned to the time-honored method of kerfing by hand. It took Tolkowsky 154 days to remove about 50 carats which otherwise would have been polished to dust. At the end was a roughly-shaped rounded crystal about the size of a bantam’s egg, weighing about 520 carats. After that was an endless process of drawing and measuring as possible shape designs began to emerge. In all, thirteen different designs were presented to the De Beers board, with the strong recommendation they should chose a modified heart shape. Once this recommendation had been accepted, the final process of faceting the Centenary began in March, 1990. By January, 1991 it was nearing completion.

When cutting was completed the Centenary weighed 273.85 carats, measured 39.90 × 50.50 × 24.55 mm, and had 247 facets – 164 on the stone and 83 around its girdle. Never before had such a high number of facets been polished onto a diamond. In addition, two flawless pear shapes weighing 1.47 and 1.14 carats were cut from the rough. Amoung top-color diamonds the Centenary is surpassed only by the Cullinan I (aka the Star of Africa) and the Cullinan II, which were cut from the Cullinan crystal before modern symmetrical cuts were fully developed in the 1920’s, making the Centenary the largest modern fancy cut diamond in the world and the only one to combine the oldest methods – such as kerfing – with the most sophisticated modern technology in cutting. The Cullinan diamonds are actually near-colorless, but qualify as white diamonds. The GIA color grading letters D, E and F qualify as colorless, and the Centenary is the best of the three – a ‘D’. This spectacular gem, which has become the ultimate example of those qualities was shown to the world for the first time in May, 1991. Mr. Nicholas Oppenheimer, then Deputy Chairman of De Beers rightly declared “Who can put a price on such a stone?” confirming that it was insured for around $100 million.

Whether the Centenary Diamond has since been sold is a mystery.

According to the legend, the Black Orlov is said to have taken its name from the Russian Princess Nadia Vyegin-Orlov who owned it for time. It is a 67.50-carat cushion-cut stone, a so-called black diamond (actually, a very dark gun-metal color).

Legend asserts that possessing the Black Orlov diamond brings a curse of death upon the owner. The jewel’s curse supposedly began when it was stolen by a monk from a Hindu shrine in southern India. Lore says this cursed all future owners of the precious stone to a violent death. In 1947, Princess Nadia Vyegin-Orlov and Princess Leonila Galitsine-Bariatinsky, both former owners of the Black Orlov, leapt to their deaths in apparent suicides.

Fifteen years earlier, J.W. Paris, the diamond dealer who previously imported the stone to the United States, had jumped to his death from one of New York’s skyscrapers shortly after concluding the sale of the jewel.
Hoping to escape the curse, the 195 carat stone was divided into three separate stones and the Black Orlov is a 67.5 carat stone which is set in a 108-diamond brooch suspended from a 124-diamond necklace. And has since been owned by a succession of private owners, all of whom seem to have escaped the curse.

The stone has been exhibited widely, including at the American Museum of Natural History in 1951, the Wonderful World of Fine Jewelry & Gifts at the 1964 Texas State Fair, Dallas, and the Diamond Pavilion in Johannesburg in 1967.

The De Beers Millennium Star is, at 203.04 carat (40.608 g), the world’s second largest known top color (D), internally and externally flawless, pear-shaped diamond.

The diamond was discovered in the Mbuji-Mayi district of Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1990 in alluvial deposits; uncut it was 777 carat (155.4 g). It was purchased by De Beers. It took over three years for workers of the Steinmetz Diamond Group to produce the classic pear form; the actual cutting was done using lasers.

It was first displayed in October 1999 as the centerpiece of the De Beers Millennium diamond collection. The collection also includes eleven blue diamonds totaling 118 carats (23.6 g) and The Heart of Eternity. They were displayed at London’s Millennium Dome over 2000.

The largest cut white (D) diamond by weight is the 1991 heart-shaped 273.85 carat (54.77 g) Centenary Diamond.