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Blue Hope
The Blue Hope
The 45.52 carat steel blue Hope Diamond was established in India back in remote times as a coarse crystal weighing 112 carats. It 1st came to light when Jean Baptiste Tavernier, the renowned French traveler of the 17th century, was advanced in India by a slave who had a very enigmatic manner about him. It twisted out that he had in his ownership a captivating steel blue stone which at 1st look appeared to be a huge sapphire, but the well-experienced Tavernier soon realized it was a diamond - the principal deep blue diamond in the planet. Its much-admired and astonishing rare blue color is due to trace amounts of boron atoms. Its exceptional size has revealed many new findings about the formation of gemstones.
Legend has it that the diamond bestowed from the eye of an idol in a temple on the coleroon River in India. If that is so, one can barely speculate that the eye must have had a comrade, but the destiny of "the other eye" has by no means gets nearer to light. It would not be the 1st well-known diamond that established it's disrepute in a spiritual idol. The Idol's Eye and the Orlov both originated from idols, in accordance to legend. Tavernier purchased the mineral and smuggled it to Paris, where he later sold it to King Louis XIV. It was sliced there into a triangular-pear-shaped stone weighing 67.50 carats, and was subsequently recognized as the French Blue or the Tavernier Blue.
The traditions of the ill-fortune subsequent to the possessor of the Hope Diamond are several. From the beginning Louis XIV, for whom Louisiana was christened by La Salle, who asserted the lower Mississippi in his name, (and was slaked by his own men) had ill-fortune pursue him, maybe deservedly. Other wearers of the jewel at the Court of France may well have specified credence to the celebrated curse. Princess de Lamballie, and Marie Antoinette whole pursued, both were beheaded during the French Revolution.
The diamond vanished, and for several years it was not heard from at all, but in 1830, a huge steel blue diamond of a dissimilar shape, and weighing only 44.50 carats emerged on the market in England was bought by Henry Thomas Hope, an English investor. In 1851 the diamond was exposed at a London presentation and was insured for a million dollars, an INSANE quantity of money for the time period, but then once more, this was the principal diamond of its sort in the world. It was later hereditary by a progeny, Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope. In 1949, it was purchased by New York gem merchant Harry Winston, who toured it for a number of years before giving it to Washington's National Museum of Natural History in 1958, and from then it remained on permanent exhibition. There is a rumor saying that the Hope Diamond carries a curse which is due to the agents who tried to arouse interest in that stone. It was last reported to be insured for $250 million.
During the period of influence of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette the French Revolution exploded, and sometime sandwiched between September 11th and September 17th, 1792, the royal reserves was looted and the Crown Jewels, together with the French Blue, vanished. The location of the stolen blue diamonds
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
- Weight: The Gemological Institute of America's Gem Trade Lab determined that the diamond weighed about 45.52 carats (9.104 g; 0.3211 oz) in December 1988.
- Size and shape: The size and shape of the diamond has been compared to a walnut, a pigeon egg, a "good sized horse chestnut" which is "pear shaped." The dimensions when compared in terms of length, width, and depth are 25.60 mm × 21.78 mm × 12.00 mm (1 in × 7/8 in × 15/32 in).
- Color:Using their proprietary scale, the Gemological Institute of America's Gem Trade Lab examined the diamond and graded it as fancy deep grayish blue in 1996. Its color being a "fancy dark greyish-blue", also simple "dark blue in color" or having a "steely-blue" color. Tavernier had described it as a "beautiful violet". Stephen Hofer, a colored-diamond expert points out that the blue diamonds are similar to the Hope which can be shown by colorimetric measurements to be grayer (lower in saturation) than blue sapphires. When visually seen, the gray modifier (mask) is so dark (indigo) that it gives an "inky" effect which appears blackish-blue in incandescent light. Current photographs use high-intensity sources that tend to maximize the brilliance of gemstones of the Hope Diamond.
- Emits a red glow:When it is exposed to short-wave ultraviolet light, the diamond shines and produces a brilliant red phosphorescence ('glow-in-the-dark' effect) that still glows for some time even after the light source has been switched off. This strange quality helped "its reputation of being cursed." According to Jeffrey Post in the journal geology, the red glow in this stone indicates that a mixture of boron and nitrogen is present within the stone.
