Hope Diamond

History of Hope Diamonds:.
             Geological Beginnings. The hope diamond was formed deep within the Earth approximately 1.1 billion years ago. It was made from carbon atoms forming strong bonds, making it a diamonds. It became embedded wirh kimberlite and eroded by wind and rain, resulting in its placement among gravel deposits. The first know diamond mine was in the Golkonda region of India, although by 1725 diamonds had been discovered in Brazil. The Hope Diamond contains trace amount of boron atoms intermixed with the carbon structure's  which result in the blur color of the diamond.

Hope Diamond In India:.

Serveral account, based on remarks written by the gem's first known owner, French gem merchant jean Baptiste Tavernier, suggest the gemstone, originated in India, in the Kollur mine in the Gunture district of Andhra Pradesh, in the seventeenth century. It is unclear who had initially owned the gemstone, whether it had been found, by whom, and in what condition. But the first historical records suggest that a French merchant-traveler named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier obtained the stone, possibly by purchase or by theft, and he brought a large uncut stone to Paris which was the first known precursor to the Hope Diamond.

This large stone became known as the Tavernier Blue diamond. It was a crudely cut triangular shaped stone of 115 carats 23g. Another estimate is that it weight 112.23 carats 22.45g before it was cut.

Tavernier's book, the Six Boyages contains sketches of several large diamonds that he sold to Louis XIV in possibly 1668 or 1669, while the blue diamond is shown among these Tavernier mentions the mines at "Gani" Kollur as a source of colored diamonds, but made no direct montion of the stone. Historian Richard Kurin builds a highly speculative case for 1653 as the year of acquisitions, but the most that can be said with certainty is that Tavernier obtained the blue diamond during one of his five voyages to India Between the years 1640 and 1667. One report suggests he took 25 diamonds to Paris, including the large rock which became the Hope, and sold all of them to King Louis XIV. Another report suggested that in 1669, Tavernier sold this large blur diamond along with approximately one thousand other diamonds to King Louis XIV of France for 220,000 livres, the equivalent of 147 kilograms of pure gold. In a newly published historical novel, The French Blue, gemologist and historian Richard W. Wise proposed that the patent of nobility granted Tavernier by Louis XIV was a part of the payment for the Tavernier Blue.According to the theory, during that period Colbert, the king's Finance Minister, regularly sold offices and noble titles for cash, and an outright patent of nobility, according to wise, was worth approximately 500,000 livres making a total of 720,000 livres, a price much closer to the true value of the gem. There has been some controversy regarding the actual weight of the stone, Morel believed that the 112,3/16 carats stated in Tavernier's invoice would be in old French carats, thus 115.28 metric carats.