pritha-mallick
Pink diamonds gain their highly desirable colour as a result of a rare, naturally occurring slippage of the crystal lattice in the stone while it is forming deep within the Earth’s crust. Here we take a look back at some of the biggest and the best stones and pink diamond rings sold at Christie’s in recent times.
Set on a lady’s ring with a unique oval-shaped, gold-mounted diamond surround, this pink stone was the star lot of Christie’s 'Magnificent Jewels' sale in May 2015 in Geneva.
Flanked on either side by shield-shaped diamonds, this pink stone is set on a platinum and 18k rose gold ring designed by the British jeweller Graff. When it went under the hammer in Hong Kong, ‘The Vivid Pink’ sold for more than double its low estimate and achieved the highest price ever paid per carat for a pink diamond at the time ($ 2,155,332). The record remained unbeaten until the sale of ‘The Pink Promise’ by Christie’s in 2017.
This square-shaped diamond, which is a particularly light shade of pink, was given by Cardinal Mazarin to Louis XIV in 1661. It then spent 225 years as part of the French crown jewels, passing through the hands of four kings, four queens, two emperors and two empresses, before its 1887 sale when the royal treasury was dispersed and its whereabouts became unknown.
Stored in a bank vault since the 1940s, this unique purplish-pink diamond is set in a Belle Epoque ring made by Dreicer & Co. and formerly belonged to the reclusive American mining and railroad heiress, Huguette M. Clark. When it sold for almost double its upper estimate in 2012, it became the most expensive pink diamond ever seen at auction in the United States.
The ring was the top lot of a collection of 17 of Clark’s jewels that were auctioned by Christie’s, which also sold her collection of paintings by artists including Monet, Renoir and Whistler, two years later.
Mounted on an 18k gold ring by the famous New York jeweller Harry ‘King of Diamonds’ Winston, this ring was nicknamed ‘The Martian Pink’ by his son Ronald, who was inspired by the 1976 launch of a US satellite to photograph the ‘red planet’ Mars, and the stone’s similar strong pink colour.
Only a few mines in the world produce pink diamonds, and of those diamonds that are cut and polished only one in roughly 10 million will possess a colour pure enough to be graded ‘Fancy Vivid’.
This large example, which is mounted between tapered baguette-cut diamond shoulders on a platinum ring, was certified Fancy Vivid in June 2016 by the Gemological Institute of America, helping it push past its top auction estimate and achieve more than $18 million when it sold in Geneva in the same year.
At the time of this stone’s sale in 2010, it was one of only 18 pink diamonds weighing more than 10 carats to have ever appeared at auction. And of those 18, none apart from this diamond had ever been graded Fancy Intense Pink at the time of its sale, which placed it in a league of its own.
Mounted in a diamond twin-surround and with a diamond-set hoop, this ring set a new world-record price for any pink diamond when it sold at Christie’s in Geneva in 2015. Owned by an American family for 15 years prior to the sale, the stone was, at the time, the largest cushion-shaped pink diamond classified as Fancy Vivid Pink to ever come to auction.
This pink stone, with its circular-cut diamond surround featuring more pink diamonds and a platinum ring, set a new price-per-carat world record for any pink diamond when it sold in 2017 — a whopping $2,175,519.
The Princie pink diamond was discovered about 300 years ago in India, and was initially owned by the Nizams of Hyderabad. It was first auctioned in 1960, where it was purchased for £46,000 by Van Cleef & Arpels. The diamond was promptly named ‘Princie’, and the house threw a christening party for the stone in its Paris showroom.
