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Smithsonian to display Dresden Green and Hope diamond |
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June 22, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP) - This fall, visitors to the National Museum of Natural History will be able to see what are probably the two most famous diamonds in the world.
The legendary Dresden Green Diamond is leaving its home in Germany on loan, to go on display alongside the Smithsonian's Hope Diamond.
The 41-carat stone from the famed Green Vault museum will remain at the Smithsonian until late January.
"It's rare, very rare, that you see two diamonds like this together. In fact it's probably the one and only time it will happen," said Museum Director Robert Fri.
Fri said New York jeweler Ronald Winston arranged the visit of the Dresden Green. "It's something he has been interested in doing for some time.
"It's kind of an obvious playmate for the Hope," Fri said of the two colored stones. Winston's father, Harry, donated the Hope to the museum.
The Dresden Green is slightly smaller than the blue, 45-carat Hope. The two stones have brilliant color, became known in Europe at about the same time, share somewhat similar histories and both are believed to have originated in India's Golconda Mines.
"Part of the reason the Hope is so well known is that it's large and blue. Green is even rarer than blue in diamonds and no other green diamond in the world is larger or even close," said Jeffrey Post, curator of the National Gem and Mineral Collection at the museum.
While boron included in the stone produces the Hope's blue color, the green tone of the Dresden is the result of exposure to natural radiation, Post said.
yesterday, he explained, it's possible to irradiate diamonds and turn them green, "so one of the reasons the Dresden Green is of interest it's a well documented green diamond" that got its color naturally.
First reports of the Dresden Green occur in London in 1726. It was purchased by Friedrich Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, in 1741.
In 1742 Augustus had it mounted in a special badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece, an organization founded in 1429 to encourage virtue and faith among nobility.
Six years later King Louis XV of France had a blue gem, believed to be the same one now known as the Hope Diamond, set in his own badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
In the intervening years, the Hope Diamond has been recut and moved from owner to owner, developing a legend of bad luck along the way.
Not so the Dresden Green, essentially a one-owner stone that survived war after war locked away in a castle for safekeeping, and displayed in the Green Vault museum in times of peace.
Only after World War II did it leave Saxony - now a state in southeastern Germany - carted off by a Russian group called the Soviet Trophies Commission.
For many years Soviet authorities told the people of Dresden the entire collection of gems had been lost, Post said. But in 1958, when the Soviets were attempting to show goodwill to the East German Communist government, the collection was suddenly found and returned.
While it hasn't developed the sinister reputation some attribute to the Hope Diamond, the Dresden Green may not be all that lucky either.
A letter written by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, recalls an incident when Augustus was asked to supply heavy artillery for a siege and refused due to the scarcity of money, having spent a large sum to buy the green diamond.
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