Record-breaking 302ct diamond unveiled
A GIANT diamond cut from the largest uncut crystal found in the past 100 years will be unveiled today, after many months of painstaking polishing.
Laurence Graff, the British jeweller, will reveal the 302.37-carat Graff Lesedi La Rona, the principal stone hewn from the 1,109ct rough diamond of the same name. The square emeraldcut stone is the largest of its quality ever graded, a Graff spokesman said.
The gem is a D-colour diamond, the highest colour rating, meaning it is completely colourless.
It is the largest of 67 cut from the famed Lesedi La Rona, which was found in Botswana in 2015: the biggest dug up since the Cullinan diamond was discovered in 1905. It has taken more than 18 months to cut and prepare the diamond, with polishing alone taking more than a year.
The Lesedi La Rona rough diamond achieved notoriety when it was put up for auction at a specially staged event at Sotheby’s in June 2016 with an estimate of $70million (£53million). The sale was a spectacular flop and the stone failed to sell. More than a year later, in September 2017, it was announced that Mr Graff had purchased it for $53million (£40.4million).
Since then, the jeweller’s team in London has subjected the rough crystal to an extended period of computer analysis, in which the stone was scanned, and each natural imperfection mapped in order to determine the best combination of diamonds to cut.
Using lasers, the diamond was divided into more than a dozen different sections. Each section was then remapped before being cut and polished.
The 66 “satellite” diamonds from the Lesedi La Rona rough range in size from less than a carat to over 25ct – tiny in comparison to the enormous principal stone that Graff was due to finally unveil today.
“Crafting a diamond masterpiece of this size and quality is a magical alchemy, combining science, art and expert intuition,” said Mr Graff, the founder of Graff Diamonds.
“Like a game of chess, our expert team had been strategically planning, anticipating and problem-solving the cutting and polishing process of the Lesedi La Rona for more than 18 months,” he added.