Monthly Archives: September 2010

Inside The Vault; The Diamond Fund, Part II

by Richard W. Wise

It is difficult to know where to start. You enter The Diamond Fund through a vault-like door. The room is simple, dark and unadorned. The showcases are brightly lit. Unlike the rest of the Armoury, the room is quiet, only two groups are allowed in at any one time. The first case contains a pile of diamonds. How else to describe it? Included are some beautifully formed bi-pyramidal crystals—several a large as quail’s eggs! I have as yet found no written reference which describes these stones and gives their history, but modern names such as the 342.50 carat “34th Communist Party Congress (actually found in Yakutia) and the 40.54 carat “Soyuz Apollo” suggest that they were sourced in the Siberian fields during the Soviet Era.

In Europe’s Royal Jewel Game; it was all about size:

After visiting the The Armoury, The Diamond Fund, The Hermitage and The Victoria and Albert (not bad for one trip, hey!) I am struck by how much quality standards in gemstones have changed over the centuries. Obviously the stone in these collections were some of the finest in the world, but they are what we today would strongly fault for the quality of their cut as well as for the often substantial number of eye-visible inclusions. It is important to note, however, that the testosterone fueled game as it was played by the royal houses of Europe was more about size than it was about quality. Having the biggest sapphire trumped having a lot of smaller higher quality gems. The point was, “mine is bigger than yours” and if the color was a little off or the cut was wonky, so what!

The Shah Diamond, so named because it was owned and signed by no less than three royal owners

The Shah Diamond, so named because it was owned and signed by no less than three of its first four royal owners

The Shah Diamond–Truly Expensive Graffiti:

The holdings include two historically important stones. The first is the 88.70 carat Shah Diamond, a Golconda stone from the famous Indian deposits. This diamond, hardly more than polished rough, has a history going back to 1544. We know who owned the stone because each of the owners signed it. The first inscription, perhaps the most expensive graffiti on earth, reads: “Burzam-Nizam Shah the second, Year 1000” (1591). Next it was owned by Akbar, the first emperor of the Mogul dynasty of India, and then by his grandson, the gem loving Shah Jehan who added his own inscription in 1644. The final signature reads: “The ruler kajar Fath Ali Shah Sultan” and was carved in 1824. The stone, which appeared to me to be of high color, is described as “light yellowish brown” due to minute cracks in the crystal which contain iron oxide. These cracks are quite invisible to the naked eye. The stone is a natural octahedral crystal with polished faces.

The second diamond is the Orloff. I was particularly keen to have an opportunity to see this great gem in person. This stone was first described by the 17th Century adventurer Jean Baptiste Tavernier which many readers will recall is the protagonist in my newly published historical novel, The French Blue. An expert observer, Tavernier was also a skillful artist; his rendering of this stone was first published in his Six Voyages (1678) and reproduced in the novel. The stone is in the shape of a giant gum drop, faceted up the sides and across the top. Tavernier describes it as being of the finest water. Golconda diamonds are usually type IIa stones, contain no measurable Nitrogen, and do not fluoresce to ultra violet light. Russian experts have noted “a barely noticeable bluish green tinge”, an ill understood phenomenon that is sometimes seen and described in Golconda diamonds such as The Regent, despite their lack of fluorescence. Diamonds of this type are highly crystalline and are often described as “whiter than white” and bring substantial premiums at auction.

The Orlof, probably the same diamond called The Great Moghul and described by Jean Baptiste Tavernier in The French Blue.

The Orloff, probably the same diamond called The Great Moghul, and described by Jean Baptiste Tavernier in The French Blue.

Another beautiful stone, a tourmaline originally thought to be a ruby and weighing 260.86 carats is set with a green enameled foliate cap. The stone was set in the rough and it resembles the shape and color of a strawberry. It has numerous visible inclusions that add to the fruit like look. It was originally owned by Rudolph II of Bohemia and described by De Boot and called at that time, “Caesar’s Ruby.” It was presented to Catherine the Great in 1777. De Boot valued it at 60,000 ducats.

Update–Siberian Amethyst:

Arrived London on the 21st. Spent a good part of yesterday viewing the famous Victoria & Albert Museum’s jewelry collection. Included is a platinum necklace with a suite of several very large (200 carat plus) amethysts given by Czar Alexander I to Frances Anne, wife of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. The suite is of Siberian amethyst. Given the provenance, you would expect these stones to be the finest of their kind. While, fine enough, measuring perhaps 8.4 on a 1-10 scale, they do not stand up to the finest Zambian and Brazilian material and seem to lack the requisite red flash.

The Treasures of Moscow's Diamond Fund, Part I

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The vaulted chamber of Hall 1, The Armoury, Moscow

by Richard W. Wise

Greetings all; my wife Rebekah and I left late last week for a vacation tour of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tallinn, Estonia. We are also spending a few days in London.

Our first stop was Moscow. As part of our tour, we visited the The Armoury. Founded in 1806 by imperial decree, the former munitions storehouse encloses the most important exhibits of Russia’s National Museum of History and Culture including the State collection of gems and jewels. The building stands at the southwest section of the Kremlin in central Moscow. Located within the Armoury is The Diamond Fund, aptly named, it is a small museum within a museum and is the repository for the finest of the jewels that are part of the Russian national collection.

Visiting The Diamond Fund is not easy. Though many visitors tour The Armoury, few make the advance reservations or are willing to pay the $130.00 per person required for a one hour unguided tour.

Beginning the Tour: Inside The Armoury:

We began our tour in The Armoury proper and the first thing that struck me as we gazed into the cases in Room 1, which houses items of gold from the 12^th through 17^th Centuries is the prevalence of emerald as a decoration in some of the oldest pieces. Many of the items on exhibit are religious objects including, several manuscript Bibles with highly decorated, carved, chased, repousée and niello silver covers. Th ese hand written scriptures were encrusted with gems the most prevalent of which are agates, emeralds and natural pearls. One object, a 14^th Century reliquary, includes numerous large cabochon emeralds, most hardly more than water worn pebbles, which displayed rather good color. The 14^th Century Crown of Monomachus, sort of a Russian fur cap with a gold crown is decorated by several large rectangular faceted emeralds as well as sapphire, spinel?, rock crystal and pearls.

Monomachus Cap. Late 14th Century. A golf carved filagreed cap set with cabochon emerald, sapphire, spinel and pearls

The Colombian emerald mines were conquered in the 1560s, so emeralds dating from this period are certainly not from that source. It is tempting to suggest that these are Uralian emeralds, however, several of these objects are thought to be of Byzantine manufacture and given that some emeralds from the Roman period have been traced to Pakistan, it is not possible to tell the exact source without testing.

Sapphire and Tourmaline:

All of the metalwork is housed in a large dimly lit vaulted chamber within the Armoury. The light is challenging. I saw a number of blue sapphires with color and inclusions that suggest Ceylon origin and though I can’t be sure, I can’t think of another possibility.

Made in 1731 by G. W. Dunkel, this crown in surmounted by a magnificent uncut red tourmaline of exceptionally pure red hue.

Another surprise, tourmaline! There are several lovely tourmalines, particularly reds, used as primary decorations on a number of the pieces in both The Armoury and The Diamond Fund. One example, a crown made in 1730 by goldsmith G. W. Dunkel in St. Petersburg for Empress Anne is surmounted by a gigantic uncut alluvial peable of red tourmaline. More about tourmaline in the next post.

The Goldsmith’s Art:

The goldsmiths work is exceptional. Repousée, a process by which a three three dimensional bas relief is formed by placing sheet gold or silver upside down in a bowl of warm pitch is breathtaking. Once cool, the pitch both holds and cushions the metal and a series of shaped hardened metal tools are used to push the metal outward. Once the figure is formed, the metal is turned right side up and small details are pushed and chiseled or “chased” in using smaller, finer edged tools. By these processes, small figures of Christ and the saints were beautifully rendered with minute detail.

Russian goldsmiths were masters of enameling and niello. Silver and yellow gold are a fairly restricted palette, one can be used to gild the other, but that is about it. Niello is a alloy of silver, lead and copper of varying mixtures and a low melting point that becomes gray to black and flows easily into chased or carved filigreed recesses in either gold or silver and can create contrasts that bring out the finer details in the host metal.

Fabergé Eggs:

The Armoury also holds Russia’s fifteen remaining Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs. A majority of these eggs, gifts to the Czarina by the ill fated Czar Nicholas II, were spirited out of Russia after the revolution by the American industrialist Armand Hammer and now reside in the

United States. Each of the eggs is a masterpiece of the goldsmith’s art. (Pictured Anastasia’s Egg). Faberge was known particularly for his use of enamels. This technique involves the fusing of powdered colored glass to the metal’s surface in a kiln at high temperatures. Each color, each changing nuance requires an additional firing. To give the impression of depth, Fabrege sometimes used as many of six firing for a single color. The workshop is reputed to have used 500 different colors.

Pearls:

Pearls were used in large numbers to decorate many of the objects, particularly the icon frames. We saw sizes up to 7-9mm in round as well as many semi-round and baroque shapes. For the most part the pearls exhibited a dull luster, which is probably the result of age and poor storage.

Next: Inside the vault, The Treasures of The Diamond Fund; stay tuned!

Siberian Amethyst, Debunking Another Myth of the Gem Trade.

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by Richard W. Wise, G.G.

A lovely example of Zambian amethyst, note the red flashes at 6 and 12:00 oclock. The alternating zones of purple and blue deliver a particularly velvety color

Quartz is as common as dirt. At 12% it is the most abundant mineral in the earth’s crust and the primary component of ordinary dust. Quartz is extremely stable and unlike other mineral components of the earth’s upper layer does not easily break down.

Amethyst is purple quartz, but despite the relative abundance of the mineral, exceptional fine rich purple amethyst, commonly called Siberian or deep Siberian color is extremely rare. In Medieval times, there were two distinct varieties of gemstones bore the name. t Oriental amethyst, was actually purple sapphire and Occidental amethyst, the quartz gem that bears the name today. Amethyst has seesawed in value over the centuries, today the finest of the fine might command $100 per carat at a high end jewelry store, in 1652, Nicols declared it to be of equal value to a diamond of the same weight.

I am not sure where the term Siberian originated and exactly how it became associated with the finest color in amethyst. The usual reason why a specific locality gives its name to the finest quality of a given gemstones, (Kashmir sapphire, Burma ruby and Paraiba tourmaline) is because the region is known to produce a particularly fine quality. This is not the case with “Siberian” amethyst. The fact is that for the past two centuries, the finest amethyst has come from Ceylon and Brazil (Streeter 1879)

Siberian amethyst is found in the Ural Mountains, with deposits outside the town of Mursinsk near the city of Ekaterinburg. Amethyst has been mined in this area since at least the 18th century and probably earlier. Sampling amethyst from mines active in this area in the 1830s, Gustav Rose, geologist with the famous Humboldt expedition (1837-1842) makes the following comment. “The Mursinsk amethyst at times is very dark violet-blue surpassing that from Ceylon but mostly it is pale violet-blue (purple) or spotted and striped (zoned).” John Sinkankas, who edited Rose’s text, calls this a “refreshing reappraisal” of Siberian amethyst and points out that Rose apparently held amethyst from Ceylon in the highest regard. In 1900, the great German gemologist Dr. Max Bauer make the identical point adding only Brazil as a source of the finest examples of amethyst. It is important to note that both these celebrated experts were able to view samples from actual working mines. Other writers (Farrington 1903) identify Siberia as a major source for amethyst in the U. S. but this is contradicted by Streeter, Kunz and G-H Herbert Smith, whose popular Gem-Stones was, perhaps the most popular general book on gemstones in the 20th Century went through 14 separate editions between 1913-1972.

Up until the 1990s the primary world source for amethyst were the Brazilian mines at Pau d’Arco, Rio Grande do Sul and Marabá. (Epstein 1988). Pau d’Arco located in the Brazilian state of Para was discovered in 1979 and was known to produce a rich sometimes over saturated purple, which often exhibited the much desired red flash in incandescent light. The other two sources produced a lighter brighter hued gem. This writer saw large parcels of amethyst, often hundreds of carats, from all these sources available for sale in the gem market at Teofilo Otoni during this period.

In the 1950s a new location of exceptionally fine gem material was located in Zambia in a 15 x 30 km belt, trending northwest in the Mwakambiko hills of the Mapatizya area of Zambia. This material, a medium dark royal purple has become famous for its dark blue zones which add a velvety “royal” quality to the face up color much as a bit of purple does in the higher qualities of sapphire. If one deposit were to be identified as the acme of amethyst it would be this one.

I was first introduced to the rough material in 1990. Much of it was being smuggled into Nairobi, Kenya. I had a good chance to examine the rough at that time and purchased several kilos. The rough was a uniform deep purple of 80-85% tone with deep blue zones running through it. Cut into gems it faced up with rich velvety slightly bluish purple and in incandescent light, the diagnostic red flashes and occasionally almost blue flashes of scintillation that are the hallmark of deep Siberian quality. Mining activity continues in Zambia but the major strike of exceptional material was mined out in the mid 1990s and a few gems cut from old rough are occasionally seen in the market.