The Famous Orloff Diamond

How diamonds are formed is not so difficult to understand when one realizes that the carbon in a diamond has been crystallized under pressure so enormous that it would be found only infrequently near the earth's surface. Artificial diamonds have been made in specially prepared bombs releasing tremendous pressures, but not on a scale commercially successful. The ideal stone is one that is colorless, flawless and possesses great brilliancy and "fire." Few diamonds have all four qualities. There may be color tints, lack of lustre, cracks or streaks or the inclusion of foreign matter. Some of the colored stones, however, are more valuable than those without color, especially flawless ones that have a strong ruby, sapphire, or emerald color.

No precious stone has played so important a role in history, fiction (particularly the detective fiction) and romance as the diamond. Murders, revolutions, suicides and political upheavals have revolved around it. The larger stones have been world famous, and probably more has been written about some of them than about many important human characters in history. The largest diamond ever found, and the only one of huge size that did not come from India, is the Cullinan diamond, which weighed, in the rough, 3121 metric carats, or about one and one third pounds! It was named after Sir T. M. Cullinan, chairman of the company that owned the Premier Mine in the Transvaal, in which it was discovered on January 25, 1905.

The Transvaal Government purchased the stone for a figure close to a million dollars, and presented it to Edward VII of England on his birthday, November 9, 1907. The next year it was cut into a number of stones. One of the most famous gems is the Orloff diamond, originally stolen from the eye of an idol in Mysore by a French soldier who sold it to the captain of an English ship for two thousand pounds. The captain received twelve thousand pounds for it from a London stone dealer, and later Prince Orloff of Russia purchased it for ninety thousand pounds and an annuity of four thousand pounds. He presented it to Catherine II of Russia and later it was placed in the end of the imperial sceptre. Where is it now? Who knows?

When you April-born slip your diamond on your hand, or wear your diamond brooch, you can reflect that your stone outranks any gem in the lapidary's catalogue, and had been acclaimed long before America was discovered, before Greece and Rome rose to power, when the centre of civilization lay along the banks of the Nile, and the rest of the world was a howling wilderness.