National Post - Financial Post Magazine
Split decisions
Finding a giant diamond is one thing, what to do with it next is quite another
EIRA THOMAS is the CEO of Lucara Diamond Corp., a prospector’s daughter and rock hound who understands that when a 549-carat monster of a diamond is unearthed at a Botswana mine owned by a Canadian company, it is best to talk about the rock without actually disclosing its current whereabouts. “It’s a top-quality stone,” she says, explaining in vague, non-geographically-specific terms that the diamond was “no longer” at the Karowe mine site but at a “secure location.”
Thomas’s secrecy is understandable: big diamonds are exceedingly rare and valuable. How rare? All the five-carat diamonds discovered annually worldwide could fit inside a basketball. A 549-carat diamond is the size of a plum, which presents an enviable problem: what to do with it next?
Before cutting a large diamond into smaller bits and selling them, piece by piece, it theoretically pays for the rock to have a narrative attached to it, one that traces the stone back to its provenance. Otherwise a diamond is just a diamond is just a diamond, even when that diamond happens to be far bigger than even the tackiest dictator would ever think of wearing.
Such was the scale of a 1,111-carat giant plucked from the Karowe mine in 2015. At the time, it was the largest diamond ever discovered in Botswana, and the second-largest gem-quality stone on record. Only Cullinan, the granddaddy of all big diamonds, was bigger. The 3,106.75-carat Cullinan was found in South Africa in 1905. It was put on public display and thousands came to see it. After a buyer couldn’t be found, the then-colony of Transvaal purchased it before presenting it as a gift to King Edward VII.
Here’s where that story gets a little strange: a ruse was concocted to safely transport the stone to London from South Africa. An England-bound steamer was dispatched with on-board detectives keeping a lookout for shady characters. Cullinan was said to be under lock and key in the captain’s safe. But the diamond wasn’t even on the boat. It had been mailed in a box, by regular post, to its final destination.
You can still see pieces of the Cullinan today whenever Queen Elizabeth II gets gussied up in her ceremonial robes for a royal occasion. A 530.4-carat piece, known as the Great Star of Africa, is mounted in the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross. Another piece of the original diamond, the so-called Second Star of Africa, is found on the Imperial Crown. As far as good diamond yarns go, the Cullinan, with its initial girth and enduring royal connection, is tough to beat.
But that has not stopped Thomas and Lucara from trying previously. In a novel, narrative-enhancing throw to crowdsourcing, the company held a naming contest in 2016 for a 1,111-carat stone, asking the people of Botswana for submissions. More than 11,000 entries poured in. Lesedi La Rona — Tswana for “Our Light” — won the day, while the man who proposed the name collected the equivalent of a US$2,100 cheque. He felt the diamond reflected the pride, light and hope of the country.
Once the Lesedi La Rona had a name, Lucara moved to auction it at Sothebys, a departure from the unwritten rules of the diamond world, which boil down to this: the buying and selling of diamonds is a private affair, best conducted behind closed doors by inviting a select handful of parties to view and make offers on a stone, as far from prying public eyes and sensational headlines as possible.
Naturally, pre-auction, there was media hype, buzz and speculation that the Lesedi La Rona could fetch US$100 million or even more. But the open auction strategy backfired. The rock failed to meet its reserve bid price and was sold a year later to a London jeweller, Laurence Graff of Graff
You can never add, and you can never cover up a mistake — you can only take away
Diamonds, for US$53 million.
Graff now had a big diamond, but also a problem: how to cut it? With the help of 3D-modelling software and high-intensity microscopes, he created a road map, showing where each laser incision should go to maximize the stone’s yield. A master diamond cutter with a background in classical music did the rest. The result, 18 months and several hundred hours of polishing later, was a 302.37-carat showstopper plus 66 smaller satellite gems. “Cutting a diamond of this size is an art form,” Laurence Graff said at the time. “You can never add, and you can never cover up a mistake — you can only take away.”
Right around the time Graff was unveiling the finished goods in April 2019, Karowe miners were celebrating another major discovery, even bigger than their first. Lucara’s 1,758-carat diamond, named Sewelo (“rare find”) after another Botswana-wide contest drawing 22,000 submissions, is now owned in partnership with Louis Vuitton Malletier, the French high-end fashion house.
Thomas says the original plan was to take Sewelo on a world tour and hype it up, before hacking it into bits and seeing what Louis Vuitton could make of it. Alas,
COVID-19 temporarily scuttled the tour since China would have been among the stops. Thomas says there has been an increase in the demand for diamond baubles among young professional women in China. Diamonds purchased not by suitors, but by the women themselves, to celebrate jobs, promotions, graduations and more. Yes, the world is ever evolving, as is the narrative around diamonds.
Thomas is left with the conundrum of what to do now with Sewelo, as well as yet another big find at Karowe, the one that weighs in at 549 carats. She’s not saying what her strategy might be, but of one thing she is certain: “Big diamonds are incredibly rare. Do I think they are more special? Well, I think all diamonds are special. Each has its own style, energy — and story.”