There’s something incredibly mysterious about the largest emeralds. It’s one of the rarest of gemstones, unattainable for most of us, at least in a good-quality stone. This magnificent 75.57-carat emerald was supposedly owned by the Ottoman Empire until 1900. Legend has it was used in the belt buckle of a sultan!
The stone was featured in Tiffany's 1950 Christmas Catalog. Mrs. Janet Annenberg Hooker bought the stone in 1955 from Tiffany's and donated it to the museum in 1977.
Emeralds are part of the beryl family of jewels. Green beryls are called emeralds, while blue-green beryls are called aquamarines. A pink shade of beryl is called Morganite. There’s even a red beryl that’s rarer than emeralds themselves.
The name emerald comes from the Greek smaragdos via the Old French esmeralde, and really just means 'green gemstone'. Innumerable fantastic stories have grown up around this magnificent gem. The Incas and Aztecs of South America, where the best emeralds are still found today, regarded the emerald as a holy gemstone. However, probably the oldest known finds were once made near the Red Sea in Egypt. Having said that, these gemstone mines, already exploited by Egyptian pharaohs between 3000 and 1500 B.C. and later referred to as 'Cleopatra's Mines', had already been exhausted by the time they were rediscovered in the early 19th century.
But it has also, for centuries, been the color of beauty and of constant love. In ancient Rome, green was the color of Venus, the goddess of beauty and love. And today, this color still occupies a special position in many cultures and religions. Green, for example, is the holy color of Islam. Many of the states of the Arab League have green in their flags as a symbol of the unity of their faith. Yet this color has a high status in the Catholic Church too, where green is regarded as the most natural and the most elemental of the liturgical colors.
There’s something so exciting about these incredibly large and perfect stones. Sometimes they have well-documented histories and we know where they came from and who owned them and when. But others have a past that’s not as well-known, and that only adds to the romance and mystique surrounding them.
One such diamond is called the Portuguese Diamond and is a 127-carat, cushion-cut diamond, shaped in an octagonal emerald shape. It’s nearly flawless. While it’s called the Portuguese Diamond, with a story that it was mined in Brazil and became part of the Portuguese Crown Jewels, there’s really no true documentation that says definitively that that’s where the diamond was mined. Must of the diamond’s history is pure legend and conjecture. One can only imagine who wore this incredible stone!
One part of the diamond's history that is well-documented is that in February 1928 Peggy Hopkins Joyce traded a $350,000 pearl necklace for the diamond and $23,000 in cash. According to New York newspaper accounts, it was mounted on a diamond-studded platinum choker to be worn close around the throat (probably the same necklace described above). Miss Joyce performed in the Ziegfeld Follies, and had six husbands, at least five of whom were wealthy. She was said to be almost as fond of jewels as of men. Sometime prior to 1946 Miss Joyce placed the diamond on consignment to the group of jewelers mentioned above, in an unsuccessful attempt to sell it.
Harry Winston acquired the Portuguese Diamond from Miss Joyce in 1951, and for the next several years it traveled the country as part of his "Court of Jewels" exhibition. In 1957, Winston sold the diamond to an international industrialist, who then traded it back in 1962. In 1963, the Smithsonian acquired the Portuguese Diamond from Mr. Winston in exchange for 2,400 carats of small diamonds.