Once upon a time, only a Brahman or maharaja could own a
necklace fitted with five magnificent Golconda diamonds such as the stones
found in the Mughal Mirror diamond necklace. Today, the necklace is available
to any commoner with some $20 million to spend. It is being marketed by
Bonham’s London as a private treaty sale, in which neither the selling price
nor the buyer’s name is disclosed. Matthew Girling, chief executive officer
(CEO) and international head of jewelry for Bonham’s, says most of the queries
he has had to date have come from Indians, eager to buy back some of their
remarkable jeweled history. Bonham’s has the exclusive right to sell the
necklace and accepted the commission only after it was assured that the piece
had been exported from India in accordance with Indian laws.
This unique piece, created some time in the early
seventeenth century, comprises a center diamond weighing approximately 28
carats and four other stones, each weighing approximately 15 carats to 20
carats. Each diamond is set within a gold bezel that follows the irregular
shape of the stone, and each suspends a carved Colombian emerald drop. The
drops are believed to have been added some 200 years later. According to
Katherine Prior, author of Maharajas’ Jewels, the center diamond is the largest
table cut known to have survived. Bonham’s notes that the five diamonds have
existed together in the same setting for centuries; although the setting is
later than the diamonds, it, too, has a Mughal feel.
Examined within their mounts by John King, chief quality
officer of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) laboratory in New York,
the diamonds have never been unmounted. “These diamonds were considered to
bring power from the gods because of their optical properties and their
hardness. It is very rare to find large pieces of this shape,” he says. The
stones are thought to have been either macles, which occur in thin segments,
requiring very little polishing, or cleavages, which have a grain like wood,
allowing them to be cleaved off the rough. These stones show no inclusions,
says King. “We grade half a million diamonds over a carat per year. One
one-hundredth of 1 percent would fall into this category.”
The polishing of these stones amazes the experts. Even under
high magnification, King says, “We did not see any polishing lines. We don’t
know how they got such a fine polish,” using seventeenth-century techniques.
Further, King adds, although “the fabled diamonds from India
were usually type II — the benchmark for limpid, very clear diamonds —
examination of these stones revealed a significant amount of nitrogen, proving
they are type I. Most diamonds from Golconda that we have tested are type I.”
The diamonds are faceted around the edge. “The facets help
protect the piece and do allow a little more light back into the stone,” King
notes. No one knows how this necklace escaped the royal Indian rush to
modernize their gems into nineteenth- and twentieth-century settings. Through
wars and upheavals, through loss of power and wealth, most of the magnificent
Mughal jewels were broken up, the stones re-cut to reflect modern tastes and
cutting skills. It is nothing short of a miracle that this necklace survived,
with these five amazing diamonds in their original setting.
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - June 2012. To subscribe click here.