Rough diamonds have no luster. Only through the precise design and ingenious carving of well-trained masters can we unveil the veil of diamonds and make full use of the nature of light, showing a rainbow-like "fire color" with flashing characteristics. The basic forms of polishing include round, pear, heart, emerald, princess, olive and oval.
Things like polishing 65,438+0,000 carats of diamonds have never happened in recent years, because there are not many gem-grade diamonds above 65,438+0,000 carats recorded in history.
Let me tell you the story of Cullinan, the largest diamond in the world at present.
Cullinan was discovered in the "Prime Minister" mining area in Pledoria, transvaal province on 1905 1 25th. At that time, the chairman of the diamond mining company was Kulinan, and this newly discovered giant diamond was named after him. Transvaal was a British colony at that time, and the colonial government bought it for150,000 as a birthday gift for King Edward VII of England.
This diamond has three natural crystal faces. Experts believe that this is a fragment of a giant diamond twice the size. Three years later 1908 1 29th, the British royal family handed it over to Joseph Askay, the best jewelry processing artist in Europe, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He found a crack in Cullinan and had to cut it. He studied for months and didn't know where to start. Finally, he decided his position and made up his mind. On February 10 of the same year, he invited several famous jewelers to help. When he was ready to sail, he held his breath, aimed at the crack in the diamond with a special chisel, pondered for a moment, and then knocked it down with a hammer ... Because of excessive excitement, he fainted at once and woke up after a long time. After that, he carried out several "operations" with trepidation before completing the cutting work. It took a lot of effort to process it into two big finished products, as well as seven medium-sized and ninety-six small diamonds. Clear and pure.
The largest piece was named "Star of Africa" by Edward VII, also known as "Cullinan I". It weighs 530.02 carats and has 74 crystal faces. It became the king of diamonds and was later embedded in the token of the king of England. The second Cullinan II is smaller than it, but it also weighs 3 17.4 carats. It has 66 crystal faces set in the British crown. The other two much smaller diamonds weigh 94.4 carats and 63.65 carats respectively. When the Queen of England ascended the throne, she wore a crown. They were exhibited as brooches in the exhibition "Immortal Diamonds" held in London in 1959. Because "Cullinan I" is called "African Star", its second, third and fourth stars are also called "African Little Stars". The 105 diamond processed by Cullinan weighs 1063.665 carats, which is only 34.25% of the original stone. In other words, the original stone lost 65.75% during the processing.
By the way, in the place where Cullinan was discovered, 1905 found two large diamonds weighing 334 and 600 carats respectively, 19 19 found some diamond fragments with a total weight of 1500 carats, and 1954 found another one weighing 420 carats. The latter was named "Snow Queen" and was processed into three diamonds of 197, 40 and 30 carats respectively. One of the largest ships was bought by Greek ship king Ni Arcos for $2 million.