"The Spirit of the Rose," a uncommon purple-pink diamond mined in Russia, was bought at a Sotheby's public sale for almost $27 million. An image ta
“The Spirit of the Rose,” a uncommon purple-pink diamond mined in Russia, was bought at a Sotheby’s public sale for almost $27 million. An image taken at a press preview on November 6, 2020.
Fabrice Coffrini/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
The biggest purple-pink diamond ever to be auctioned has been bought in Geneva, Switzerland for 24,393,000 Swiss francs ($26,700,871).
The purple-pink diamond, known as “The Spirit of the Rose,” was bought to an nameless purchaser, bidding over the cellphone on the Sotheby’s public sale on Tuesday. It weighs 14.eight carats however was minimize from a bigger tough diamond that weighed 27.eight carats, which was found in Yakutia, northeast Russia in 2017.
The tough diamond was mentioned to be the most important pink crystal to have ever been mined in Russia and was named “Nijinksy” after the legendary Russian-Polish ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. “The Spirit of the Rose” was the identify given to the minimize diamond, after the final ballet Nijinsky carried out on stage.
It took a yr for Russian reducing masters to kind the tip diamond, giving it an oval form to make sure it will be the utmost dimension.
Pink diamonds have been first found in India within the 17th century and their colour is considered the results of a distortion within the “crystal lattice,” or its atomic association. That is “created by intense warmth and nice strain after the stone’s formation within the earth,” in line with a proof on Sotheby’s web site.
“This distortion displaces many carbon atoms from their regular positions and alters the qualities of sunshine mirrored by the diamond — leading to us observing the stone as pink,” the public sale home defined.
Pink diamonds differ from different coloured diamonds as there aren’t any chemical hint parts current in its formation. For instance, the presence of nitrogen kinds yellow diamonds, whereas boron creates blue diamonds.
Just one% of pink diamonds are mentioned to be bigger than 10 carats and simply 4% are graded “fancy vivid.”
The “CTF Pink Star,” weighing 59.6 carats, holds the present report for the value paid for a pink diamond at public sale, at $71.2 million, which was bought in Hong Kong in April 2017.
“The Grand Desk,” which was proven to a French service provider and adventurer in India within the 17th century, is taken into account to be largest pink diamond recorded up to now, at over 200 carats.