The Spoonmaker's Diamond (Turkish: Kaşıkçı Elması) is a 86 carats (17 g) pear-shaped diamond which is considered the pride of the Imperial Treasury exhibitions at the Topkapi Palace Museum and its most valuable single exhibit. Considered the fourth largest diamond of its kind in the world, it is kept under conditions of high security.
Set in silver, surrounded by a double row of 49 Old-mine cut diamonds (brilliants) and well spotlighted, it hangs in a glass case on the wall of the third room in Imperial Treasury section of Topkapı's "Conqueror’s Pavilion", where it is clearly the most eye-catching jewel.
These surrounding separate brilliants give it "the appearance of a full moon lighting a bright and shining sky amidst the stars". Providing an additional beauty to the Spoonmaker's Diamond and increasing its value by as much again, the brilliants are considered to have been ordered or arranged either by Ali Pasha or by Sultan Mahmud II – though this, as all other details of the diamond's origins, is doubtful and disputed (see below).
Notwithstanding the many other treasures of gold, silver, rubies and emeralds of the Topkapı Palace Treasury, the Spoonmaker's Diamond is said to have drawn the adoring, amazed looks of countless Imperial favourites, Queens and mothers of Sultans.
Read more about Spoonmaker's Diamond: Alternate Accounts of The Diamond's Antecedents, In Film, See Also
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