Delaire Sunrise diamond: a cut above

Newspaper reporters are generally not allowed to use superlatives. The objectivity, however, gets lost when you have to write about The Delaire Sunrise, the largest diamond for its cut and quality in the world today.

Mesmerising in scale and beauty, the over 100-carat Fancy Vivid Yellow-coloured stone by world-renowned jewellers Graff is doubtlessly destined for historic status and a likely home at some museum.

It all began in an alluvial mine in South Africa, where an astonishingly rare rough diamond of 221 carats, in a natural octahedral shape, was discovered.

Beautiful and intriguing in its raw, natural state, the stone exerted such a powerful magnetism that, despite the potential risks and challenges, Graff Diamonds Holdings chairman Laurence Graff remained determined to preserve the perfect form, a true miracle of nature, by transforming the rough into a square emerald-cut diamond.

For this audacious task, he chose his master cutter, a renowned expert with an acute sensibility, Nino Bianco.

Bianco fell in love with the article. He spent months studying the stone, planning the angles and facets to create a poetry of precision that would maximise the glorious colour of the stone.

It nearly took half a year to plan and another half to cut. Bianco, sadly, died soon afterwards.

What he left has been a 118.08carats rich yellow diamond with spectacular depth and light, with the vibrant, warm tones of molten gold, a diamond as breath-taking as the African sunrise.

“The Delaire Sunrise is a diamond that express the pinnacle of new luxury, that speaks to today’s discerning clients who delve into the origins and meaning of the stones, and want to be involved in their stories, their creative process,” Graff senior executive and a 35-year industry veteran Clive Golanski told Gulf Times.

“It can never be replicated. People see diamond and say Oh! here’s another diamond. But this is a crown jewel. More suited to leaders of the world and collectors, who track us year-round,” Golanski added.

The diamond, appears at a time of impassioned connoisseurship among gemstone and jewellery devotees and collectors around the globe, when the quest for individuality, for the rarest of the rare, has intensified, to a point of near obsession, and when the diamond becomes the ultimate possession, with a power beyond worldly wealth, as it was for princes and potentates through history.

“On the first public day today at Doha Jewellery & Watches Exhibition, we’ve already had two important people come to us and inquire about the piece,” Golanski said.

Certified by the Gemological Institute of America, as the largest square emerald-cut Fancy Vivid Yellow diamond to date, the piece has been tagged at a staggering $42mn (about QR153.3mn).

However, regardless of how much the diamond, joined to a necklace of flawless white diamonds in multiple shapes of hearts, oval, marque, costs, in true sense it will remain priceless, the official said.

For now the journey of The Delaire Sunrise continues.

Photocaption: The original well-formed octahedral crystal weighing 221.81carats AND Now weighing 118.08carats and priced at $42mn