Previously 77 Diamonds brought you the low-down on the largest and most prominent diamond mines on the globe. Some of the largest, rarest and most impressive diamonds that the world has ever seen have been unearthed in these mines! This week we present to you the five largest dazzlers ever found, each one totally unique and with its own story.
The Golden Jubilee
The Golden Jubilee has a staggering weight of 545.67 carats and is boastfully the largest faceted diamond in the entire world. The stone is a fire rose colour and was cut into a cushion shape. Discovered in 1985 at the Premier Mine in South Africa, the rough stone itself weighed 755 carats. For several years the gem was simply known as the ‘Unnamed Brown’. However, in 1997 the diamond was presented to the King of Thailand for the 50th anniversary of his coronation – his Golden Jubilee. It is now located in the Royal Thai Palace as part of the crown jewels. The value of the diamond is unknown, but it has been estimated at somewhere between £2.56 to £7.69 million!
The Cullinan I or ‘The Star of Africa’
The Cullinan I is an astonishing pear shaped diamond weighing 530.20 carats and is also known as ‘the Star of Africa’. The stone has 76 facts in total and impressively measures 53mm x 44mm x 29mm. It gets its name because it is the largest of 9 large stones which were cut from the humongous 3106 carat Cullinan Diamond. The diamond was discovered on 26th January 1905 by Frederick Wells, the surface manager at the Premier Diamond Mining Company in Cullinan, South Africa. The master Cullinan stone was named after Sir Thomas Cullinan, who opened the mine and was visiting on that eventful day of discovery. It was set into the Sovereign Royal Sceptre of King Edward and is still on display as part of the Crown Jewels at the tower of London. The Star of Africa is valued at more than £256 million!
The Incomparable
The Incomparable weighed a huge 890 carats in its original rough form and was found by a young girl playing the in the rubble outside her uncle’s house in the town of Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1980s. Several years were spent studying and then cutting the stone in order to yield the biggest possible design. The largest piece made a gem weighing 407.48 carats, measuring 53.90 x 35.19 x 28.18. As a fancy brownish-yellow coloured and internally flawless stone, it is one of the finest and biggest diamonds ever found and is in this sense ‘incomparable’. In 1988 the diamond was sold at a Christie’s auction for £12 million. In 2002 it was placed on eBay for the opening bid of £15 million, but the gem remained unsold.
The Cullinan II
The Cullinan II may be referred to as ‘the Lesser Star of Africa’ but it is still a massive 317.40 carat cushion shaped diamond. The prominent gem was mounted as the centrepiece on the band of the Imperial State Crown of Great Britain. Cullinan II was cut as one of the 9 stones made from the same master stone as the Cullinan I – the largest gem-quality diamond ever found, with a grand weight of 3106 carats.
The Spirit of de Grisogono
The Spirit of de Grisogono is an incredibly striking diamond since it weighs a whopping 312.24 carats and is also the world’s largest black diamond. Before it was cut, the black gem had a rough weight of 587 carats. It was discovered in west Central Africa several decades ago and later imported to Switzerland to be cut over the period of one year using the traditional Mogul diamond cutting technique by Swiss jeweller De Grisogono. The unusual stone was mounted onto white gold to contrast its colour and is set surrounded with 702 stunning white diamonds with a grand total of 36.69 carats.
So which rare dazzling giant do you prefer? What would you choose to do with a diamond discovery of such magnitude and how would you display or set it? There are many other beautiful diamonds that have been made famous for their generous size, including The Centenary, The Jubilee and The Millennium Star… watch out for our next instalment on more of the world’s biggest diamonds, soon to come!
