The jewels & the crown

From Princess Margaret’s pearls to the priciest of diamonds, gemmologist HELEN MOLESWORTH has seen them all. She shares the science and romance of the world’s most precious stones

On a hot evening in June 2006, Helen Molesworth stood by the auctioneer’s rostrum, scarcely able to believe what she was hearing as prices soared ever higher. Princess Margaret’s jewellery was being sold to a crowd of bidders, each anxious to possess a precious gem whose lustre was enhanced by a little bit of royalty.

Models in black evening dresses, their ears and necks sparkling with the late princess’s jewels, moved through the crowd. ‘The room was so packed we had to open another. Hands were shooting up, bids were coming in all the time on the two banks of phones, while some dealers who wanted to remain unobtrusive stood at the back,’ she recalls.

‘Everything was selling for many times its estimate. The provenance of a jewel can have a huge effect on its price,’ she says. The Poltimore Tiara, bought by Princess Margaret for £5,500, and worn for her wedding to Antony Armstrong-Jones, went for £926,400.

‘Working on that collection was a highlight of my career,’ says Molesworth. Christie’s, the auction house for which she was then working as jewellery specialist, had sent her to Kensington Palace to value it. ‘We were handed jewels in their boxes, case by case over the table, some with handwritten notes inside, like, “Mum wore this”, or “from Queen Mary”.’ It was when Molesworth opened a green leather case with a gold-tooled coronet and the monogram ‘M’ on the lid that she saw the pearl necklace featured in many of the early Cecil Beaton photographs.

Today Molesworth, 46, who spent ten years working with Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London and Geneva, is senior jewellery curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Her new book Precious, containing all she knows about jewels, from their physical composition to their history, provenance and value, is out now.

Molesworth says she has been obsessed with jewels since her early childhood. Their history, their mystery and their beauty mean more to her than anything else. A truly amazing stone can even affect her physically. ‘My mouth will water, or a rash creep up on my neck. When I saw the Graff Ruby, a stone I shall remember for the rest of my life, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.’

In 2008, at an exhibition in Geneva, she held the Wittelsbach diamond – ‘the stone that has probably affected me the most’ – in her hand. This extraordinary blue sparkler held such power that she felt she had actually lost part of herself. ‘A little bit of my soul had fallen into it, as into a deep pool.’

Her passion began early. ‘As a small child, I used to dream about digging up gold crosses studded with red stones, even though I had never seen such things,’ she says.

‘When I was six, my godfather showed me an amethyst geode [an object like half a stone egg, its ‘yolk’ a mass of glittering purple amethyst crystals]. It was magic. I wanted it. Eventually, my godfather put it on top of the garden wall to be out of my reach. But I was so obsessed by it, I

climbed up and brought the whole wall down on me, breaking my leg.’

Later, at Christ Church, Oxford, Molesworth read classics, and took a paper on Roman archaeology that included minerals and small objects. ‘I loved the gem studies, the academic side,’ she says.

After Oxford, she was uncertain what career path to follow. ‘One day, I asked my father [a dentist] what he thought. He said, “Choose a job that will make you happy. Hair? Clothes? Make-up? Jewellery?”

Then he walked out of the room.’

Jewellery it was. ‘Within two weeks, I’d started a gemmology course, moved to London and got a job with a Bond Street jeweller. I thought, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll be a lawyer.’ Molesworth now writes and teaches gemmology courses.

Being a gemmologist comprises everything from history to travel, classical art, science and sheer intuition – the last often through the look and feel of a stone. ‘One of the things I love is going to the mines,’ says Molesworth. ‘It’s magical knowing that a gem that’s spent half a billion years deep in the earth is out in the air for the first time and is now in your hand.’

Molesworth has been down Burmese and Colombian ruby mines, endured the heat and humidity of an Andean emerald mine reached by vertiginous mountain roads, and dredged for sapphires with a bamboo sieve while wading in a Sri Lankan river (she found one!). With her jeweller’s loupe – a specialist magnifying glass – always carried in her handbag, she can tell at once if the ruby in your ring comes from Thailand or Burma

(the latter tends to be darker and richer), or whether an emerald is from Colombia or Zambia. ‘Sometimes you have to look right inside a stone to see certain features relating to its geology,’ she says.

Cutting and polishing, which Molesworth has also done, is what changes a stone’s value dramatically. When the Cullinan Diamond (discovered in 1905 in South Africa and, at 10.1cm x 6.35cm x 5.9cm, the largest diamond ever mined) was presented to King Edward VII in its raw state, he remarked, ‘I should have kicked it aside as a lump of glass, if I had seen it in the road.’ It took eight months of cutting and polishing. Today, its second largest part (Cullinan II) blazes from the front of the imperial state crown, and the largest

(Cullinan I) from the sovereign’s sceptre.

Blue and pink diamonds are the world’s most expensive stones, worth more than a million dollars per carat (a measurement of weight equal to one-fifth of a gram). The world record is for the 59.6 carat Pink Star diamond, mined in 1999 in South Africa and sold by Sotheby’s in 2017 at a Hong Kong auction for $71.2 million (around €66 million).

Who buys these epic gems? Sometimes jewellers, private clients or a dealer for one (the Taylor-Burton diamond mined in 1966 in South Africa was originally called the Cartier diamond) and sometimes collectors. Quite a few just go into a safe. ‘The most likely place to see fabulous jewels today is at an Indian billionaire’s wedding,’ says Molesworth.

And her own favourite stone? ‘At the moment it’s the spinel,’ she says. ‘It has been underrated for ages, but it is one of the most spectacular gems in the world – it has a wonderful light to it and a lot of history.’ Spinels, for those who, like me, have never heard of them, are ruby-like stones, often found in Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The best known is probably the Black Prince’s Ruby, a huge purplish-red stone set just above Cullinan II in the imperial state crown.

‘I have some beautiful spinels, from the days when no one appreciated their value. I also have a beautiful fire-opal necklace from the turn of the 20th century,’ says Molesworth. ’Another favourite is a platinum and gold 1920s ring with a synthetic ruby set in diamonds, which I bought in a Geneva market for 200 Swiss francs [around €202]. Because, at the end of the day, it’s all about what you like – the stones with which you feel you have a relationship.’

‘AS A CHILD I USED TO DREAM OF DIGGING UP GOLD CROSSES STUDDED WITH RED STONES’

1 An amethyst, which started Helen Molesworth’s love for jewels. 2 Ring with a Colombian muzo emerald, which are renowned for their clarity.

3 The legendary Taylor-Burton diamond.

4 Princess Margaret’s wedding tiara. 5 An emerald and diamond necklace given by Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor. 6 Princess Margaret on her 19th birthday, wearing pearls that would be sold at auction for €323,480 in 2006. 7 The Pink Star diamond fetched €66 million in 2017.

8 The blue Wittelsbach diamond, a Molesworth favourite. 9 Sapphire and diamond brooch, and

10 Ruby and diamond ring, both owned by Princess Margaret