A Brief History
On January 26, 1905, the South African earth gave up the largest gem-quality diamond in history!
Digging Deeper
Digging deeper (no, really, digging deeper!), we find the Premier Number 2 mine producing an enormous diamond of over 3,106 carats!
Named the Cullinan Diamond, this gemstone was over 4 inches long before it was cut and polished into gems. The largest of those cut gems is the 530.4-carat “Great Star of Africa” which currently has a home on the royal sceptre of England. The Star remained the largest cut and polished diamond in the world until 1985 when the Golden Jubilee Diamond (545 carats) was found, ironically in the same mine!
To put these enormous gems in perspective, the famous Hope Diamond (a dark blue diamond) is “only” 45.5 carats! Most men are shocked at the price of a one-carat diamond, and “rocks” of several carats make news when celebrities give or receive them.
The second biggest gem cut from the Cullinan Diamond is called “The Second Star of Africa” and weighs in at a hefty 317.4 carats. It also has a home among Britain’s crown jewels and is mounted on the imperial crown. In total, 9 large diamonds were cut from the Cullinan Diamond, the “smallest” of those being 4.4 carats.
The third and fourth largest gems cut and polished from the Cullinan Diamond are called “The Lesser Stars of Africa,” although at 94.4 and 63.6 carats, both are substantially larger than the Hope Diamond! Hardly lesser diamonds! These two giant diamonds also reside among the British crown jewels.
Since the British royal family apparently did not have enough crown jewels, the High Commissioner of South Africa presented the remaining 96 smaller cut and polished gems from the Cullinan Diamond to Queen Mary in 1910!
If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, the current Queen of England has some good friends indeed!
Question for students (and subscribers): Are diamonds really a girl’s best friend? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Fried, Michael. “1 Carat Diamond Ring: The Expert Buying Guide.” The Diamond Pro. December 3, 2020. https://www.diamonds.pro/education/1-carat-diamond-ring/.
Hart, Matthew. Diamond: A Journey to the Heart of an Obsession. Walker Books, 2001.
Hazen, Robert M. The Diamond Makers. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
And just for fun…
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Parent Géry of a faithful copy in resin of the Cullinan, the largest diamond ever found, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch a video version of this article on YouTube.
