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Marie Antoinette Earrings There's no more fascinating subject in history than the doomed French Queen Marie Antoinette. Much maligned by history (she never said "Let them eat cake," in response to the people's need for bread), she was an unwilling part of the one of the greatest revolutions in history. And met an untimely end at the guillotine in 1793. While she loved jewelry, and possessed many magnificent
jewels, she often preferred simple muslin gowns and very little jewelry. Many of the portraits of her by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun show her dressed just like that.
Two large, pear-shaped diamond earrings, weighing 14.25 and 20.34 carats respectively, are part of the Smithsonian Institution's collection. The diamonds once were supposedly set in earrings that belonged to Marie Antoinette and some sources say they were her favorite pieces of jewelry and she wore them constantly. They were taken from her during an attempt to flee France as the Revolution dawned and the position of the Royals became dangerous.
The diamonds were later acquired by the Grand Duchess Tatiana Yousupoff of Russia. When jeweler Pierre Cartier puchased the diamond earrings in 1928, their authenticity was attested to in an affidavit by Russian Princess Zenaide Yousupoff and her son, Prince Felix Yousupoff, stating that they originally belonged to Queen Marie-Antoinette and have never been reset in the one hundred years that they were in the family. Marjorie Merriweather Post acquired the earrings from Pierre Cartier in October 1928. Harry Winston reset the large diamonds in platinum replicas of the original silver settings in 1959. Cartier, Inc. designed the triangular tops. In November 1964, Mrs. Post's daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Barzin, donated the earrings, along with the original setting to the Smithsonian Institution. The diamonds are originally from India or Brazil, the only significant sources of diamonds in the eighteenth century.
Blue Heart Diamond
There is a spectacular diamond in the Smithsonian Collection called the Blue Heart Diamond. Fans of the movie Titanic might think the "Heart of the Ocean Diamond" was based on this stone, and it may have been! However, this diamond hasn't been cast...
Gachala emerald
more than 3,500 years ago for the Pharaohs, this precious green stone also has been worshipped by the ancient Incas and Aztecs, the Indian Maharajas and Maharanis, and kings, queens and other royals all over the world throughout history. The...
Fire
The term fire is commonly used to describe a diamond, but what does it refer to? The ancient Greeks thought that fire in a diamond symbolized the eternal flame of love. Fire in a diamond is the dispersed light that appears as rainbow-like flashes of...
Sri Lanka
southern tip of India. This pear-shaped bit of tropical paradise, about the size of Sicily, is a tourist's delight offering British teahouses, rubber plantations, and gem mines. Marco Polo wrote of his visit in 1292: "I want you to understand...
Heat conduction
meaning they reduce the flow of electricity. Blue diamonds owe their semi-conductive property to boron impurities, which act as a doping agent and cause p-type semiconductor behavior. Diamonds appear cold and hard, but they're good conductors of...
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