Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond
The Wittelsbach Blue is a large natural blue type IIb diamond with a purity of VS2. With his first touch he had a weight of 35.56 carats ( 7.11 g ). He was part of the Austrian and Bavarian crown jewels until 1918. In 2008, he was acquired by the British jewelers and gem dealers Laurence Graff, who had him regrind in 2009 and renamed The Wittelsbach - Graff Diamond. It weighs only 31.06 carats today. The Umschliff is judged by experts critical.
Because of its size, color and clarity of the Wittelsbach Blue has often been compared with the Hope Diamond. Until Neuschliff in 2009 he measured 24.40 mm in diameter and 8.29 mm in depth. He had 82 facets, which were arranged atypical. The star-shaped facets in the crown of diamond were divided vertically, and the lower part was 16 needle-like facets that were arranged in pairs from the culet to the outside. He is considered the oldest known diamond.
History
The acquisition history of diamonds is in the dark. It is also unclear where he got his touches. When in December 1666 came Margarita Theresa of Spain to Vienna, she brought a dowry of jewels from her father, King Philip IV of Spain, including probably the originating probably from an Indian mine in Kollur at Golkonda gem. They donated the stone that was taken at this time as a centerpiece of a breast jewel, her husband, Emperor Leopold I, who in turn gave it to their daughter Maria Antonia as a dowry. In 1722 came the diamond by the marriage of her niece Maria Amalia with Karl Albrecht of Bavaria as part of her dowry to the house of Wittelsbach and was first inventarisert as a blue diamond. After the coronation of Charles VII Maria Amalia had incorporated the diamond in their empresses crown.
1761, five years after Maria Amalia's death, prompted Elector Maximilian III. Joseph, perhaps inspired by the version of the Dresden Green Diamond, the incorporation of the Wittelsbach Blue in a religious sign of the Order of the Golden Fleece. When Elector Max Joseph was raised in 1806 for the first King of Bavaria, he left after a design by Charles Percier make a royal crown, which contained the Wittelsbach Blue as Lodestone. In an inventory of 1807, the stone was estimated to a value of 300,000 florins, as much together as all other royal jewels. Until 1918, the diamond remained at the top of the crown of the Kingdom of Bavaria House and State icon. For the last time he was seen in public in this version in 1921 at the funeral of King Ludwig III.
The diamond came into the Wittelsbach Compensation Fund. 1931, the house was put up at auction the Wittelsbach Blue at Christie's Wittelsbach to solve liquidity problems as a result of the global economic crisis and received a permission of the Bavarian government under Heinrich Held; at the auction on December 21, 1931 but found no buyer. The sale came into existence only in 1951 in Antwerp; 1958, the stone without a name or reference to its historical significance at the Brussels World Exhibition was shown. In August 1961 the jeweler Jozef Komkommer acquired in Antwerp the diamond from a community of heirs of the gemstone dealer Romi Goldmuntz and sold it after the compensation fund had rejected a buy-back, in 1964, of Hamburg jeweler Renatus Wilm on an initially unknown, was known by the later that it was the department store magnate Helmut Horten, who acquired him for his then- girlfriend and future wife Heidi Jelinek.
On 10 December 2008, the Wittelsbach Blue was at auction by Christie's in London for 16.4 million pounds sterling, ie 23.4 million U.S. dollars or 18.4 million euros auctioned. The purchaser was the London jeweler and gemstone merchant Laurence Graff. The price was up 16 November 2010, the highest that has been achieved at auction for a diamond.
Regrinding and migration
On January 7, 2010, the New York Times, Graff have had new grind the stone of three gem cutters to remove splinters and bring purity and brilliance to better advantage, so that the stone had lost four carats. The Neuschliff was among them Hans Otto Meyer, through critically evaluated by experts, because the stone had thereby lost its historic character. Otto Meyer, called the Neuschliff according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as vandalized; Graff did the stone to the " Royal Lolly ".
The diamond, now out as The Wittelsbach - Graff Diamond, was from January 29 to September 1, 2010 alongside the Hope Diamond at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC issued. After that he was seen at the end of October 2010 to January 2011 in the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Minerals of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In June 2011, the New York Times reported that the stone had recently been sold by Graff for an undisclosed sum. Presumably, the current owner Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani with a purchase of at least 80 million U.S. dollars.