The Incomparable

After the Diamond Hope, I will tell you about the incomparable.

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The incomparable is a yellow-brown diamond, one of the largest ever found in the world.
When discovered, the rough stone weighed 890 carats, 178 g.

It was then cut and we obtained the fourth largest diamond in the world, weighing 407.49 carats.

It was a small girl who found it in 1984 in Mbujimayi (city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the Mbuji-Mayi River), in a pile of rubble from a former mine of the Bakwanga Mining Company.

The rubble was excluded from the recovery process because it was considered too bulky to be treated.

The girl gave the diamond to her uncle, who sold it to an African dealer who, in turn, sold it to a group of Lebanese buyers who were operating outside Kinshasa.

Then, after going from hand to hand, De Beers who bought it in Antwerp, sold it to Donald Zale, director of Zale Corporation, a Dallas-based jewelry chain that bought the diamond in partnership with Marvin Samuels, from Premier Gems Corporation, and Louis Glick, both major figures in the New York diamond industry.

The diamond was then displayed in the natural history wing of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, where the Hope Diamond is also located.

See my link on this topic :

https://steemit.com/malediction/@lndesta120282/the-hope-diamond

Cut

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Before being cut, the rough stone has a mass of 890 carats, it is the largest brown diamond ever found. And the fourth largest all-color diamond, after Cullinan I, (3,106.75 carats), Excelsior (995 carats) and Star of Sierra Leone (968.9 carats).

When the size of this massive diamond, its owners could have obtained the largest jewel in the world, surpassing the Cullinan I (530.20 carats), but finally, to have the least possible defects, the size has reduced it to 407.5 carats. Nevertheless, it is the third largest diamond after Cullinan I and Golden Jubilee.

The size of the stone took four years and was made by a team led by Marvin Samuels, co-owner of the stone, renowned for his experience and expertise in the size of large diamonds.

Before the facets of the diamond were cut, work was undertaken on the 14 fragments removed from the rough stone. Mr. John Sampson White, then a mineral curator at the Smithsonian, examined these fragments and made an interesting discovery: the first detail that came to his attention was their difference in color. He had held the 890-carat rough diamond in his hands many times, but had never noticed these differences before.
Some fragments were a rich yellow color with a slight amber-like brown tone, and some were pale yellow or colorless. The darker stones came from the darkest area of the rough stone, but since this area was limited to the surface of the stone, it had largely been removed.
The final color of the diamond is yellow. Mr. Sampson White's review led him to realize that the original stone was not uniform in color but had several different colored areas.
The crystal was composed of areas of different colors each representing the transformations that occurred in the crystal environment as it developed. The stone had once been colorless, before Mother Nature gave it its pale yellow color and an amber 'skin'. Fourteen satellite stones were cut.

The size was not very obvious, Indeed, the basic shape of the stone was very irregular, relatively thin at one end and thicker on the other side. She had one striated face and another hollow and pocked. In carving it we noticed its purity, indeed, the interior of the stone was perfect, without impurities.

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Auction

Before being auctioned in New York on October 19, 1988, the diamond was donated to Christie's in London, which named it "Golden Giant". He then appeared at a second auction under the name Incomparable. He is the biggest diamond to have been presented at a public sale.

Louis Glick, jeweler, would today be the owner of the Incomparable.

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