Hope Diamond - Replicas

Replicas

In 2007, an important discovery was made which enabled a slew of activity to help scientists, historians and gemologists further explore the history of the Hope Diamond, as well as create replicas of the larger pieces, from which it had been cut, believed to have been owned by eighteenth-century French monarchs. A lead cast of the French Blue diamond was discovered in the gemmological collections of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, reported in a bilingual French–English press release, and the unique finding triggered an investigation by an international team of researchers into the stone's history. It was an important event since previously investigators had to rely on two dimensional sketches of the diamond, but now they had a three dimensional structure with which to apply techniques such as computer-aided drawing analysis. It allowed creation of the first numeric reconstruction of the French Blue including a virtual snapshot video. Even the emblem of the Golden Fleece of Louis XV was numerically reconstructed around the French Blue, including the "Côte de Bretagne" spinel of 107 carats (21 g), the "Bazu" diamond of 32.62 carats (6.52 g), 3 oriental topazes (yellow sapphires), five brillants of up to 5 carats (1,000 mg) brillants and nearly 300 smaller diamonds. Special care was taken to reconstruct the major gemstones precisely by using CAD analysis as well as knowledge of historical gemsetting techniques. As part of the investigation, the "Tavernier Blue" diamond was also reconstructed from the original French edition of Tavernier's Voyages (rather than the later London edition that somewhat distorted and modified Tavernier's original figures), and the Smithsonian Institution provided ray-tracing and optical spectroscopic data about the Hope diamond. These events culminated in an event and a documentary to celebrate the making of these replicas, with celebrations by the French museum including H. Horovitz, Martin du Daffoy who was the historian and jeweller from the Place Vendôme in Paris, as well as directors and leaders from the museum. The event was filmed by Gédéon programmes for a documentary on the French Blue diamond, to be presented by 2011 worldwide.

The lead cast of the French Blue, itself, has a history. It had been catalogued at the French museum in 1850 and was provided by a prominent Parisian jeweler named Charles Archard who lived during the same generation as René Just Haüy, who died in 1822. Most likely, the lead cast was made near 1815, since that was the year that similar entries from the 1850 catalogue had been made. The model was accompanied by a label stating that the French Blue was in the possession of a person known as "Mr. Hope of London". Other archives at the Muséum suggests that Achard had Mr. Hope as a good customer for many long years, particularly for blue gems.

These findings have helped investigators piece together what may have happened during the rock's anonymous years during the several decades following 1792. According to one line of reasoning, the first "Hope" to have the "Hope Diamond"––Henry Phillip Hope––might have possessed the French Blue that he had acquired some time after the 1792 robbery in Paris, perhaps around 1794-1795, when the Hopes were believed to have left Holland for London to escape Napoleon's armies. At about the same time, Cadet Guillot, who may have been one of the thieves to have stolen the Golden Fleece, arrived in London. This places Mr. Hope and Mr. Guillot in London at the same time. According to a late nineteenth century historian named Bapts, a contract was made between Cadet Guillot and a French aristocrat named Lancry de la Loyelle, in 1796, to sell the 107-carat (21 g) spinel-dragon of the Golden Fleece. According to this line of reasoning, in 1802 Hope sold his assets, and the continental blockade by Napoleon led the Hope's bank into a serious financial crisis by 1808, and the crisis peaked during the winter of 1811-1812 This put Mr. Hope in a financial bind. There is a possibility that, given his financial predicament, Hope pawned the French Blue to jewel merchant Daniel Eliason to get much-needed cash when the British currency, sterling, was highly depreciated. This is consistent with the entry in Eliason's records about having the stone in 1812. However, the diamond's owners may have felt pressure to recut the stone quickly to disguise its identity, since if the French government had learned of its existence, it may have sued the owners for repossession. Regardless of whether Mr. Hope had lost possession or kept it during these years, by 1824 it was again in his possession. It was around this time that Eliason died; Hope's financial situation has been restored thanks to efforts by the Barings, who saved the Hope bank in the difficult financial years of 1812-1820. Accordingly, if this is correct, then the lead cast of the French Blue and the "Hope" diamond are likely to have been created in the same workshop, possibly in London, and probably a little before 1812.

The lead cast had important ramifications since it gave enough information to curators at the French museum to commission the first exact replicas of both the Tavernier and French Blue diamonds using a material which simulates diamonds called cubic zirconia, with the help of artisans who work with gems known as lapidaries, led by Scott Sucher. These replicas have been completed and displayed with the French Crown Jewels and the Great Sapphire of Louis XIV, a Moghul-cut sapphire of 135.7 carats (27.1 g). Artisans recreated the elaborate parure of different-colored gems known as the Golden Fleece of King Louis XV of France, which is arguably the most fabulous work in the history of French jewelry; this happened from 2007–2010. The original parure, created in 1749 by royal jeweler Pierre-André Jacqumin, was stolen and broken in 1792. The reassembled jewel contained the French Blue and the Bazu diamonds, as well as the Côte de Bretagne spinel and hundreds of smaller diamonds. Three years of work were needed to recreate this jewel, and it required exacting and precise skill which revealed not only the skill of today's lapidaries, but the skill of its original eighteenth-century designers. The reconstructed jewel was presented by Herbert Horovitz, with François Farges of the French museum in attendance, at the former Royal Storehouse in Paris on June 30, 2010, which was the same site where the original had been stolen 218 years before.

Additional recreations were made possible by new discoveries. A previously unknown drawing of the Golden Fleece was rediscovered in Switzerland in the 1980s, and two blue diamonds that had ornamented the jewel were found as well, and these recent findings enabled artisans to recreate a copy of the emblem. It led to the construction, using cubic zirconia, of a piece that almost exactly resembles the mythic French Blue 69 carats (14 g) masterpiece.

The emblem has another great blue diamond, which was later named "the Bazu" in reference to a dealer who reportedly had sold it to Louis XIV in 1669. This Bazu diamond was recut in 1749 as a baroque cushion weighing 32.62 carats (6.52 g). The 1791 inventory mentioned that the Bazu was "light sky blue", which is consistent with the fact that the Golden Fleece of the Color Adornment was made of a variety of great colored gems. Based on documents kept in a private collection, it could be shown that this particular diamond was not hexagonal-shaped, as some historians had previously thought, but was in a shape best described as "rounded squared", similar to the so-called Régent diamond. There is a report that a curator from the French museum will assert that the hexagonal cut from the Bazu is inconsistent historically and gemologically. The Bazu stone referred to another version of Louis XV’s great Golden Fleece, made out of blue sapphires instead of blue diamonds. According to one view, this version appears to have never been manufactured but only suggested to the king as an alternative to the effective final version, bearing two blue diamonds. Nevertheless, replicas of both blue diamonds were cut by Scott Sucher using cubic zirconia, one being colored deep–blue and the other light–blue.

The emblem had a third great gem known as The Côte de Bretagne dragon. Its replica was based on a wax likeness sculpted by Pascal Monney, who had based his recreation from three-dimensional scaled pictures of the original object which had been made by French artist François Farges; Farges, in turn, had seen the original objects displayed at the Louvre's Galerie d’Apollon. In addition, artist Etienne Leperlier cast a "crystal" lead glass duplicate of the wax replica of the carved Côte de Bretagne. Its pigmentation is made out of gold and manganese pigments to simulate as close as possible the original color of the spinel.

The 500-plus remaining replicas of diamonds were cut from cubic zirconia using a baroque cushion cut. Colors were used to recall the original artwork: red for the flames, and yellow for the fleece, and in keeping with the original work, the materials used were initially colorless but were painted in the same fashion used by the artist Jacqumin when the original Golden Fleece was completed in 1749. Since the original was most likely made out of gold plated with silver, a choice was made to use a matrix mostly made out of 925-grade silver to keep costs under control without compromising quality. A number of different artists helped with this project:

• The silver matrix was carved by Jean Minassian of Geneva who used historical drawings of the delicate three-dimensional elements of the dragon's wings and tail as well as the palms around which the dragon is suspended.

• Casts were made by Andreas Altmann. This will allow even more copies to be made in the future.

• Amico Bifulci gilded parts of the matrix to recreate the elegant original gold and silver arrangement of the original.

All stones were set according to 18th century techniques. Finally, a luxury box containing the Golden Fleece was recreated by Frédéric Viollet using crimson-colored Moroccan leather. The box was gilded by Didier Montecot to the arms of Louis XV, using the king’s original iron stamp made by the Simier house. A dark red cramoisi ribbon, made of crimson satin moire, holds the jewel inside the box.