Diamonds Of Fate

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

One of the most recent famous gems is the ‘Jonker,’ said to be amongst the four largest diamonds ever to come to light. It was dug from a muddy hole not far from Pretoria by a colored man in the service of an Afrikander names Jacobus Jonker. Sir Ernest Oppenheimer paid £60000 for it. Like most of these extraordinarily large stones in the rough, the Jonker,too showed defects which made is advisable to split it into several pieces. One of the minor pieces when cut weighed about twenty carats and was sold for a large sum to a London businessman in April, 1938. Although I only heard of the deal going through as I was leaving my office in the evening, one of the leading London papers had already got wind of it and rang me up for any information I could give. I mention this to show that sizable gems of quality are of perennial news value.

One can have too much even of the best. The recital of rare diamonds is no exception, but I cannot bring this chapter to a close without mentioning the two rarest diamonds in the world: one blue and the other green.

It was in the year 1642 that Tavernier bought in India a rough diamond weighing 112¼ carats, of a violet-blue so extremely rare that no other stone of such tint of any appreciable size has been known before or since. When later he sold the stone to Louis XIV in 1668 as a faceted stone, its weight had been reduced to sixty seven and one-eights carats.

Louis, who is spoken of as le roi soleil—the Sun King—owed this flattering epithet less to his mental gifts than to his love of display. On appropriate occasions he could deck himself out i such manner that his person put in the shade the lesser luminaries. ‘The King,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘on occasion of the reception of the Persian Ambassador, was dressed in a black suit ornamented with gold and embroidered with diamonds at a cost of twelve million, five hundred thousand livres. Suspended from a light blue ribbon round his neck he wore a dark-blue diamond as a pendant.’

At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1792 the French regalia was seized and stored at the Garde Meubles, but whatever else may have remained intact, the blue diamond had disappeared.

Now, when thirty two years had elapsed there appeared in the hands of a dealer, one Daniel Eliason, a blue diamond of a tint identical with that worn by Louis XIV, but it only weighed forty four and a quarter carats, or twenty three and one-eighth carats less than the King’s gem. Was this a new stone that had no connection with the royal jewel? The possibility must be admitted, but in the light of what transpired subsequently we are justified in arriving at a different conclusion.

But before we go in search of clues to the unravelling of the mystery, let us see what Mr Daniel Eliason did with his forty four and a half carat blue diamond. Being a trader, he did not wear it suspended round his neck, but seeking a customer for it, found him in the person of a Mr Henry Thomas Hope, and from the time the gentleman parted with £18000 to get possession of the lovely gem of a beautiful sapphire blue, it became known as the ‘Hope’ diamond. Of this stone E W Streeter, as great a connoisseur of gems as any of his contemporaries, says ‘that because of its extreme brilliancy, faultless texture, exquisite form (7/8-inch in breadth, 1 1/8 inches in length, and of unusual thickness), it is unique’. He estimated its value at £30000. It was his opinion that Louis XIV’s blue diamond had been cloven into two parts: one the size of the Hope diamond (being none other), and another, after allowing for the unavoidable waste in recutting, of ten to eleven carats.

Now for the denouement of the riddle. In the year 1874 there actually came into the market, at a sale of the Duke of Brunswick’s jewels at Geneva, a triangular blue diamond weighing between twelve and thirteen carats; and subsequently elsewhere a very much smaller piece again of the same color and quality. Since all these stones were of the same rare blue tint which has never been encountered in any other diamond known in the world, and since their total weight—allowing for cleavage and cutting—is a rough equivalent of the royal French jewel, no doubt can exist in the mind of any logical person that the thief, whoever it was, had the original stone cut into three pieces as conditioned by its natural cleavage lines.

Diamonds Of Fate (continued)

How To Dream

The book, Dream: A Tale of Wonder, Wisdom & Wishes by Susan V. Bosak is about life's hopes and dreams, inspiring both children and adults.

Useful link:
http://www.tcpnow.com/books/dream.html

When Nature Calls, Use Your Cell Phone

(via Budget Travel): When nature calls, use bathroom locator service @ www.mizpee.com

Here's how it works: Turn on your phone's Web browser, and search for bathrooms by city and street address. The site will fetch a list of the nearest ones, along with details, such as whether each bathroom has a diaper-changing station.

Call MizPee

The Jewelry Channel

www.tjc.tv is interactive + includes user forums + blogs + live broadcast 24 hours a day + a unique shopping experience.

Meet The Woman Who Dictates The Taste Of Coffee

Jenny Gold writes about Tracy May Adair, who holds the grand title of master coffee cupper for Folgers + how to taste Folgers coffee + other viewpoints @ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16671564&ft=1&f=3

In my view, the concept of grading and tasting coffee is similar to colored stone grading / diamond grading / wine tasting / tea tasting + it's subjective, educational.

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (1941)
Directed by: Orson Welles
Screenplay: Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead

(via YouTube): Citizen Kane (1941) Full Film - Part 1/12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYbXQmD_Fq8

One of the greatest films + a rare gem + I enjoyed it.

Pearls Of Dubai

The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre + Arrow Pearls of Australia would be culturing Akoya pearls in the region (United Arab Emirates) + the pilot project of 100000 oysters would be harvested early in 2009 + the concept is to produce a branded ‘Dubai’ line of cultured pearls, 8-9 mm size + marketed
via local jewelers.

Cultured pearl industry is a highly fragmented industry. In my view, the cultured pearl industry may go through boom and busts in the coming years due to proliferation of producers around the world + the unpredictability of nature.

I also believe the popularity of pearls in the traditional and emerging consumer populations are growing due to improvement in quality, innovative jewelry designers + creative retailers.

Wallinger Takes Turner prize With Re-creation Of Parliament Protest

(via The Guardian) Charlotte Higgins writes about Mark Wallinger, the Turner prize winner + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/turnerprize2007/story/0,,2221510,00.html