Centenary

The famous Centenary comes from a stone on the rough of 599 carats. One of the three biggest diamonds in the world, boasting an incomparable degree of clarity, and the biggest contemporary diamond. The De Beers company (the greatest company worldwide in searching, extracting, processing and selling diamonds, controlling the 75% of diamond production worldwide), on the anniversary of its centenary, declared the extraction of a diamond of exceptional color and clarity of 599 carats from the Premier mine on the 17th of July 1986. The very few people knew about the stone and had sworn secrecy. After two years, in 1988, the diamond was revealed to the public during the De Beers 100 years anniversary festivities. It is worth noting that the biggest diamond ever found was the Cullinan, weighting 3000 carats, was discovered in 1905 in the same mine. To whom could De Beers trust this stone for its processing if not to the expert hands of the polishers of Anvers? The Centenary, which was discovered with the help of X-Rays, was assigned to Gabi Tolkowsky, one of the top diamond cutters in the world and the “father” of 5 new cutting methods maximizing the characteristics even of the more “resistant” diamonds in the rough. When Gabi Tolkowsky referred to the Centenary in 1988, he said: «From the instant I was told I would be responsible for its cut, I became another person. A stranger. I was looking at during the day and it was looking at me during the night.” A whole year was needed just for the building of the place where Tolkowsky would cut the diamond, in the De Beers workshop in Johannesburg. A whole team started studying the stone in 1986, under the supervision of Gabi Tolkowsky. After 154 days and removing 50 carats, Tolkowsky presented it to the company’s management team, suggesting 13 different designs, until a decision on its final shape was made –and brought to life a year later. The result of 3 years of study and polishing was a masterpiece of a 273.88 carat weight, the biggest diamond of perfect color and clarity. The structure of the stone was of 247 sides (164 on the stone and 83 around its girdle). The Centenary diamond’s size is only surpassed by the Cullinan I and II and the Golden Jubilee. The Tolkowsky name is famous in the diamond world. Marcel Tolkowsky, Gabi’s uncle, was the one who, based on laws of mathematics and physics, designed the modern day brilliant cut which until today is named after him. The diamond of the rough, of a size of about 6 cm wide and 4,5 deep, was ideal for a pear cut, which would release an incomparable shine. Many tests were run in order to prepare for any eventuality, and new tools were invented while in the process of cutting this stone. In these tools, sensors were placed to calculate the heat released by the diamond during the shine. This measurement was necessary due to the possibility of the stone shattering during the shining process due to internal stress. The rarity of this diamond allows us to imagine the anxiety of the polishers. The whereabouts, the selling or any other details about the Centenary are unknown. De Beers has a strict policy of not making that kind of information public. The diamond might appear one day at an auction or in a museum. Nevertheless, when the diamond was revealed to the public for the first time, in 1991, Nicolas Oppenheimer, then vice president of De Beers, assured that it was insured for 100 million dollars, while De Beers president, Julian Ogilvie Thompson, declared that the insurance covering the diamond was of 500.000 $ a carat. {gallery}centenary{/gallery}