Index
Truth of the Hope Diamond
Perchance, one of our UrbanSurvival readers, first name Nancy – you can figure out the rest – is a first-class gemologist bad gem cutter extraordinaire up in New Mexico. She recently filled us on in the real true-life history of the Hope Diamond.
George,
This information is written to expand upon what (commenter) Jester had written regarding the Hope diamond. This is long.
Thomas Walsh did indeed possess the proverbial luck of the Irish. He worked his way across the US continent, accumulating wealth as he went west. He ended his travels in the mountains of southern Colorado, where he established a mining town that focused upon the Camp Bird gold mine at Ouray. In 1896, his miners hit a rich tellurium gold vein that made him fabulously wealthy. He was taking care of his pre-teen daughter, Evelyn, at the time and decided that it was time for him to move to New York City and introduce his daughter to high society.
In time, a marriage was arranged between Evelyn Walsh and Thomas McLean, whose family owned the Washington Post and the Cincinnati Inquirer. During their honeymoon in Paris, they met Cartier, who eventually sold her the Hope diamond, among other significant diamonds and jewelry items.
The Hope diamond is shrouded in mystery and myth as well as documented facts. History informs us that Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was the noted gem merchant who sold a large blue diamond to King Louis XIV in 1668. That diamond became the Tavernier diamond and weighed just over 112 carats. (It was a wide and flattened diamond with limited depth that would be called a mackle in today’s diamond nomenclature.) The French king then had it redesigned and cut into a heart shape of great beauty and remarkable precision that exhibited a double rose in the culet, located at the bottom of the diamond near the point. The double rose was significant, in that it represented the goddess Isis by her signature marking. This extraordinary heart-shaped blue diamond became known as the French Blue.
In 1792, during the ongoing French Revolution in Paris, the French Blue was stolen in September of 1792, along with many other white diamonds that were mostly recovered. The blue diamond lay hidden for just over twenty years and was recut into an irregular oval diamond that now weighed 45.5 carats. This diamond showed a very deep pavilion with a flat crown and wide table facet.
The newly recut blue diamond made its debut in London in September of 1812. Interestingly enough, the French Assembly under Napoleon in 1804 had adopted an amnesty law that forgave all crimes that had been committed in time of war after a passage of twenty years, a type of statute of limitations. So, the recut blue diamond came onto the market twenty years and a few days later. This was a crime on many levels.
Henry Hope, a member of a famous banking family, was the owner of the world’s most prominent collection of white and colored diamonds. The Hope family owned the bank in London that loaned money for the Louisiana Purchase and the Napoleonic wars. Henry Hope acquired the blue diamond, now 45.5 carats, that became the Hope diamond we know in history.
A mountain of information exists that centers upon the Hope diamond, including who owned it, who did not own it, and who was reputed to have owned it but really never did own it. It made its way to the Smithsonian from a donation by Harry Winston, who had purchased it from the estate of Evelyn Walsh McLean. Another story.
The curator of the Gem and Mineral Collection at the Smithsonian, Dr. Jeff Post, asked three of us—Scott Sucher, Dr. Stephen Attaway (my late husband), and me—to be the team to use several computer modeling software programs to unravel the provenance of the Hope diamond in 2004. We were successful in tracing the Hope diamond back to the French Blue. Our research involved several old books that described the Tavernier diamond and the French Blue to obtain our volume parameters, and the use of 3D modeling software that included SolidWorks, Gem Cad, and Photo Modeler (photogrammetry software).
New evidence discovered in 2008 in France led to the conclusion that Henry Hope had masterminded the theft of the French Blue. This revelation has a very long story that I will not discuss here.
There is more to the Hope diamond story, but I can say that it was an honor to have been a part of the team. And yes, I did get to hold the Hope diamond when it was removed from its diamond-studded Cartier pendant as we were using photogrammetry software.
A real treat, it was.
Contrary to some in the gem world, there are no sister stones to the Hope diamond. We did find a few artifact facets on the Hope diamond that were left over from the French Blue. In recutting the Hope diamond from the French Blue, the diamond was ground down to a new shape to hide a crime, which generated a slurry that was thrown out. The French Blue was not cleaved into the Hope diamond, as that would have been too risky.
So, no sister stones.
= = =
During our research, I faceted a replica of the French Blue diamond for the Smithsonian, while Scott Sucher faceted a replica of the Tavernier Blue diamond. In 2008, the curator of the French museum, similar to the Smithsonian, had located the famous lead mold that was used in faceting the French Blue. That is another interesting story in itself, as the lead mold had been missing for 300 years. The lead mold revealed that the French Blue was not equal on the sides but slightly different. The one I cut was very close, but the replica that Scott was able to cut was exact, since he had the advantage of the lead mold.
###