Hope Diamond

The Hope Diamond is a 45.52-carat (9.104 g; 0.3211 oz) blue diamond that has been famed for its great size and blue-violet color since the 17th century. It was extracted in the 17th century from the Kollur Mine in Andhra Pradesh, India. The gemstone's exceptional size has revealed new information about the formation of diamonds. The Hope Diamond's recorded history begins in 1666, when the French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier purchased the raw Golconda stone in India. After cutting the gem and renaming it "the French Blue" (Le bleu de France), Tavernier sold it to King Louis XIV of France in 1668. It was stolen in 1792, re-cut by persons unknown, and recovered after a lapse of years, appearing under the Hope name in an 1839 gem catalogue from the Hope banking family, from whom the diamond's name derives. The Hope Diamond's last private owner was the American jeweler Harry Winston, who bought it in 1949 from the estate of the mining heiress and socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean. After exhibiting the diamond on tour for several years, Winston set it in a necklace and donated it in 1958 to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., where it remains on permanent exhibition.