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Famous Diamonds in the World The Amsterdam Diamond
The Amsterdam Diamond
Origin of name
The Amsterdam diamond gets its name from the city of Amsterdam, a worldwide power house of the diamond industry, anywhere the rare black diamond made its first appearance in 1973, at the jewelry store of D. Drukker & Zn.
Characteristics of the stone
The Amsterdam diamond is a 33.74-carat, pear-shaped, black diamond with a sum of 145 facets. It is the second black diamond of significance to make it's appearance in the diamond trade after the Black Orlov diamond, a diamond purported to have originated in India, but whose first authentic appearance was around 1950, when Charles F. Winson, the New York City, gem and jewelry dealer, acquired the diamond. In the list of famous black diamonds the Amsterdam diamond occupies the 7th position.
List of famous Black diamonds
| S.No | Name | Carat Weight | Shape / Cut |
| 1. | The Spirit of Grisogono | 312.24 | old moghul-cut |
| 2. | The Black Star of Africa | 202.00 | |
| 3. | The Table of Islam | 160.18 | emerald-cut |
| 4. | The Gruosi diamond | 115.34 | heart-shaped |
| 5. | The Korloff Noir | 88.00 | |
| 6. | The Black Orlov | 67.50 | cushion-cut |
| 7. | The Amsterdam | 33.74 | pear-shaped |
History of the diamond
Black diamonds are established only in two regions of the world, viz. Brazil and Central African Republic and they frequently occur in alluvial deposits. Black diamonds never arise in Kimberlite and Lamproite pipes and therefore they do not create deep inside the earth like conventional diamonds. None of the black diamond has ever been exposed in the conventional Kimberlite diamond mines of South Africa, Australia, Canada or Russia. Even in the long record of development of diamonds in the Indian Sub-Continent, the first diamond manufacturing country in the world, the innovation of black diamonds have never been reported.
An attractive feature of black diamonds is that unlike confor
mist diamonds which are made up of a single huge crystal, they are completed up of collectives of possibly millions of tiny crystals fixed together, giving it a permeable nature. Iron compounds such as magnetite and hematite may be related with the corporation crystal, giving it the black color. Black diamonds are harder than conventional diamonds, as they do not have cleavage flat surfaces like conventional diamonds. Thus black diamonds are tremendously difficult to cut and polish. Though there may be regions in the black diamonds that are softer, due to slackly bound spongy material. Therefore functioning with black diamonds can cause serious confront to the qualified diamond cutter. Hence severe losses of weight are a standard occurrence in the cutting of black diamonds.
The Amsterdam black diamond which weighed 55.85 carats in the jagged position weighed only 33.74 carats in its finished structure as a pear-shaped diamond. The Amsterdam Black diamond is of African origin and most possibly it would have invented in the Central African Republic, the basis of several other black diamonds. The diamond no doubt would have been slash in Amsterdam itself, a state that had been celebrated for its skilled diamond cutters, as 17th century. But, Antwerp in Belgium had overhauled Amsterdam as the chief diamond cutting center of Europe behind world war II, since the abolition of the Jewish diamond cutters during the holocaust by the Nazis.
The Amsterdam diamond was first displayed in February 1973, at the jewelry store of D. Drukker & Zn. Amsterdam. In November 2001, the extraordinary diamond was auctioned off by Christie's for a verification sum of $ 352,000, setting a world record for the maximum cost obtained by a black diamond at an auction. The pear-shaped Amsterdam diamond was situated in a jewelry enclosed by 15 cushion-cut, smaller white diamonds and the color difference was very outstanding.
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