50 Fun Facts About Jewelry

The Mohs hardness scale used for gemstones was introduced in 1812 by a mineralogist of which nationality?

Friedrich Mohs, a German mineralogist who spent much of his career in Austria, ranked ten reference minerals in 1812 by which could scratch which.

Which mineral sits at 1, the softest point, on the Mohs scale?

Talc is 1 on the Mohs scale and can be scratched with a fingernail; gypsum is 2, calcite 3 and fluorite 4.

Rubies get their red colour from traces of which element?

Chromium replacing a little of the aluminium in corundum produces ruby's red; the same mineral coloured by iron and titanium instead gives the blue of its sister gem.

Which gemstone is the modern birthstone for September?

Sapphire is September's birthstone on the modern list adopted by American jewellers in 1912; peridot belongs to August, opal to October and topaz to November.

How many carats does the Hope Diamond weigh?

The Hope Diamond weighs 45.52 carats; under ultraviolet light it glows with an eerie red phosphorescence, one of the traits used to identify it.

Trace amounts of which element give the Hope Diamond its blue colour?

Trace boron makes the Hope Diamond a type IIb blue; such boron-bearing blue diamonds are only about 0.1% of gem diamonds, while nitrogen tints stones yellow.

To which institution was the Hope Diamond donated in 1958?

The Hope Diamond was donated to the Smithsonian in Washington in November 1958, famously sent by registered mail in a plain package; it became the centrepiece of the Natural History museum's gem hall.

Which jeweller first lent jewels to actresses for the 1944 Oscars and later donated the Hope Diamond?

Harry Winston lent jewels to Jennifer Jones for the 1944 Academy Awards, starting the red-carpet loan tradition; he bought the Hope Diamond in 1949 and gave it away in 1958.

Which French traveller bought the rough Hope Diamond in India and sold it to Louis XIV?

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the gem merchant and travel writer, sold the roughly 115-carat blue to Louis XIV in 1668; recut, it became the French Blue and, much later, the Hope.

The Cullinan Diamond, found in South Africa in 1905, weighed how many carats when rough?

The Cullinan weighed 3,106 carats, about 621 grams, when found near Pretoria in January 1905; Asscher of Amsterdam cut it into 9 major and 96 minor stones.

The Cullinan Diamond was named after what?

Thomas Cullinan owned the mine; the stone itself was sent to Britain in a plain box by registered post while a decoy went by ship.

Cullinan I, the Great Star of Africa, is mounted in which piece of the British regalia?

Cullinan I, just over 530 carats, was set in the head of the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross in 1910; its 317.4-carat sibling, Cullinan II, sits in the front of the Imperial State Crown.

What does the name Koh-i-Noor mean?

Koh-i-Noor is Persian for 'Mountain of Light'; the stone, recut in 1852 on Prince Albert's orders, lost about 40% of its weight to reach 105.6 carats.

In 1937 the Koh-i-Noor was set into which piece of British regalia?

For the 1937 coronation the Koh-i-Noor was mounted in the platinum crown made for Queen Elizabeth, George VI's consort, known after 1952 as the Queen Mother's Crown.

The 1849 treaty that ceded the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria was signed in which city?

The Last Treaty of Lahore, signed in March 1849 in the Sikh capital after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, surrendered the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria on behalf of the ten-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh.

An 18-karat gold ring is what percentage gold by mass?

18 karat means 18 parts gold out of 24, so the ring is 75% gold by mass, marked 750 in the parts-per-thousand system.

Sterling silver contains what percentage of pure silver?

Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver alloyed with 7.5% other metal, usually copper; that is why sterling pieces are stamped 925, parts per thousand.

The word 'hallmark' derives from the London headquarters of which guild?

'Hallmark' comes from Goldsmiths' Hall, the London home of the Goldsmiths' Company, whose wardens assayed and marked precious metals there and introduced the date-letter system in 1478.

The 1300 English statute that began hallmarking required silver to be marked with which animal's head?

Edward I's statute of 1300 ordered silver to bear the leopard's head, the mark of London; the leopard's head went on to serve as the London assay office's town mark.

Which symbol is the assay office mark for Birmingham on British hallmarks?

Birmingham's mark is an anchor, reputedly chosen in 1773 at London's Crown and Anchor tavern, where Sheffield's lobbyists took the crown and Birmingham's the anchor.

What was the first Fabergé imperial egg, made in 1885, called?

The Hen Egg, commissioned by the tsar for Empress Maria Feodorovna at Easter 1885, has a plain white enamel shell that opens to a gold yolk, a gold hen and, originally, a crown and ruby pendant.

In what year was Tiffany & Co. founded in New York?

Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young opened their stationery and fancy-goods store at 259 Broadway in 1837; the brand's signature blue is registered with Pantone as '1837 Blue'.

The 1886 Tiffany Setting ring holds the diamond off the band with how many prongs?

The 1886 Tiffany Setting raises the diamond above the band on six slender prongs, letting light in from all sides; it became the template for the modern solitaire.

Which luxury group bought Tiffany & Co. in 2021 for about $15.8 billion?

LVMH, Bernard Arnault's group, completed its roughly $15.8 billion purchase of Tiffany in January 2021 after a bitter legal fight over the price; it had bought Bulgari in 2011.

Which king called Cartier 'the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers'?

Edward VII, who ordered 27 tiaras from Cartier for his 1902 coronation, called it 'the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers' and granted a royal warrant in 1904.

Cartier designed its first flat wristwatch in 1904 for which pioneering aviator?

Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aviation pioneer, complained to Louis Cartier that a pocket watch was useless in flight; the 1904 square-bezel Santos watch was the answer.

Which copywriter coined the slogan 'A Diamond Is Forever' for De Beers in 1947?

Frances Gerety, a copywriter at N. W. Ayer & Son, wrote 'A Diamond Is Forever' late one night in 1947; Advertising Age named it the slogan of the twentieth century in 1999.

The first well-documented diamond engagement ring was given in 1477 by which archduke?

Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the future Holy Roman Emperor, gave Mary of Burgundy a diamond ring on their betrothal in 1477; they married in Ghent that August.

On an Irish Claddagh ring, what does the crown symbolise?

On a Claddagh ring the crown stands for loyalty, the heart for love and the two hands for friendship; how it is worn signals whether the wearer is single or taken.

The Black Prince's Ruby in the Imperial State Crown is not a ruby at all but what?

The Black Prince's Ruby is a roughly 170-carat red spinel, a mineral long mistaken for ruby; the crown also carries 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls and 5 true rubies.

Who attacked the elderly keeper and stole a crown, sceptre and orb from the Tower of London in 1671?

Colonel Thomas Blood, disguised as a parson, clubbed the elderly keeper Talbot Edwards and made off with the regalia; caught at the Tower gate, he was bizarrely pardoned by Charles II.

The word 'diamond' comes from a Greek word meaning what?

'Diamond' descends from the Greek adamas, 'unbreakable' or 'untameable', the same root as the English word 'adamant'; it reached English via Old French diamant.

The GIA diamond colour scale begins with which letter?

GIA's colour scale starts at D, the first three letters being skipped so the new 1950s scale would not be confused with older A-B-C style grades; it runs down to Z.

One carat, the unit used to weigh gems, equals how many milligrams?

A metric carat is exactly 200 milligrams, standardised in 1907, and is divided into 100 points; the word traces back through Arabic to the Greek for a carob seed.

Emerald is a green variety of which mineral?

Emerald is beryl, a beryllium aluminium silicate, tinted green by trace metals; its internal fissures are called 'jardin', French for garden, because of their mossy look.

Richard Burton bought the La Peregrina pearl for Elizabeth Taylor at auction in 1969 for how much?

Burton paid $37,000 for La Peregrina at Sotheby's Parke-Bernet in January 1969; Taylor once lost it in a Las Vegas hotel and found it in her puppy's mouth.

Elizabeth Taylor sold the Taylor-Burton Diamond in 1979 to build a hospital in which country?

Taylor sold the 69-carat Taylor-Burton Diamond for about $5 million in 1979 and used part of the proceeds to build a hospital in Botswana, where she and Burton had married for the second time.

The Pink Star diamond set an auction record in Hong Kong in 2017 when it sold for roughly how much?

The 59.60-carat Pink Star fetched $71 million, precisely $71.2 million, at Sotheby's Hong Kong in April 2017; buyer Chow Tai Fook renamed it the CTF Pink Star.

Opal is the national gemstone of which country?

Australia declared opal its national gemstone in 1993; it has produced the great majority of the world's precious opal, with Lightning Ridge in New South Wales famed for black opal.

Tanzanite is the blue-violet variety of which mineral?

Tanzanite is blue-violet zoisite coloured by vanadium, found in a single strip near the Mererani Hills in northern Tanzania; it shows strong trichroism, blue, violet or burgundy by angle.

Amber, used in jewellery for millennia, is what?

Amber is fossilised tree resin, hardened over millions of years and often trapping insects; its Greek name, elektron, gave us the word 'electric' because rubbed amber holds a static charge.

The colour-changing gem alexandrite was named in honour of which future Russian emperor?

Alexandrite, a colour-changing chrysoberyl found in the Urals in the 1830s, was named for the future Alexander II, then the tsarevich; fine stones look green by day and red under incandescent light.

Myanmar supplies more than 70% of the world's high-quality what?

Jadeite, the rarer and harder of the two jade minerals, comes overwhelmingly from Myanmar's Kachin State; its finest emerald-green grade is called imperial jade.

The 189.62-carat Orlov diamond was set into the imperial sceptre of which Russian ruler in 1774?

Count Grigory Orlov bought the diamond and presented it to Catherine the Great in 1774, hoping to win back her favour; she had it mounted in the imperial sceptre.

The Kimberley Process, which certifies rough diamonds as conflict-free, came into effect in what year?

The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme took effect in January 2003; it grew out of a May 2000 meeting of producing states in Kimberley, South Africa, and a UN General Assembly resolution that December.

Excluding the tiny culet facet, how many facets does a modern round brilliant-cut diamond have?

A round brilliant has 57 facets, 33 on the crown and 24 on the pavilion, or 58 with a culet; Marcel Tolkowsky set out its ideal proportions mathematically in 1919.

The oldest known jewellery, found in Moroccan and Israeli caves, was made from what?

Pierced sea-snail shell beads are the oldest known jewellery: Nassarius beads from Skhul Cave in Israel are about 100,000 years old, and Tritia beads from Bizmoune Cave in Morocco around 142,000.

For about how much did the Sunrise Ruby sell at auction in 2015?

Its $30 million price was a record for a coloured gemstone at the time. For centuries the Mogok Valley of Upper Burma was the world's chief source of the finest 'pigeon blood' stones.

The word 'jewel' traces back to the Latin 'jocale', meaning what?

Latin jocale means 'plaything', from jocus, 'jest'; the word reached English as 'jewel' via the Old French 'jouel'.

In Sanskrit, the word for ruby, 'ratnaraj', means what?

Ratnaraj combines ratna, 'gem', with raj, 'king', so the Sanskrit word for ruby means 'king of precious stones'; the gem has been prized in India for millennia.