The Niarchos Diamond

The world famous diamond was bought from the Greek Magnate Stavros Niarchos in 1956 as a present to his then wife Charlotte Ford, for the price of 2 million dollars. Besides the fact that the Ford family was often referring to this diamond with the nickname “ice skating ring”, it is an amazing stone of rare quality which is a considered a reference in many books, while its sale was an even broadly covered by the Media. It was discovered on the 22d of May 1954 in the Premier mine, the same mine were the Centenary was discovered three decades later. In its initial rough form, the stone weighted 426, 5 carats. Its size was of 25 mm length, 19 mm thickness and 51 ml height, internally flawless and with a very few external cracks, probably due to the pressure from machines. According to Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, the owner of the mine, this was a diamond of exceptional color, maybe one of the best transparent diamonds he had ever seen, an opinion to which his close associates concurred. Soon the diamond travelled to London and on the month February 1965, the Diamond Trading Company (a De Beers company) announced its sale to the firm Harry Winston Inc of New York for the price of 3 million dollars. This transaction was the biggest sale of a unique piece made to a customer by the DTC to that day. The discussions between Harry Winston and his coworkers on how to cut the stone lasted for weeks. As it is usually the case in pieces so rare in size and quality, the reaching of a decision of whether to cut the stone in one or many smaller pieces is usually very difficult. H. Winston, feeling the importance of such a great size in a unique cut stone, decided to give it a try. Due to a schism, two smaller cut diamonds appeared besides the main one. The first weighted 70 carats, and was cut into a marquise of 27,62 carats. The second had the same weight as the first and was cut into an exquisite diamond of an emerald cut of 39,88 carats. The whole process was done by the head of workshop and specialist in diamond schism Bernard de Haan, who dedicated himself to this work for a whole year. The biggest piece remaining weighted 270 carats uncut. It took 58 days for it to become the “Ice Queen”, as it was first named, a stunning pear cut diamond of 128 carats and a total of 144 facets. Stavros Niarchos bought these 3 stunning pieces and after his divorce with Charlotte Ford lent the biggest of the three to shows and exhibitions, thus guaranteeing the name of the diamond. On the pantheon of famous diamonds, there always will be a diamond with a Greek name. The whereabouts of the diamond Niarchos today are not certain, since its last appearance was during the 100 year lasting exhibition “Jewel Box 1966” in South Africa. The only thing that we know is that the 33,99 carat emerald cut second piece was auctioned from the Sotheby’s House in October of 1991 in New York under the name “Ice Queen” and was bought by the sheikh Ahmed Hassan Fitaihi for the amount of 1.870.000 $, and was estimated by the GIA as a color D and a clarity VVSI.