It’s not as famous as the Hope Diamond, but the Dresden Green Diamond has its own place among the most valuable diamonds in the world. It is also unusual in that it is set as a hat ornament rather than in a more traditional jewelry setting. The Dresden Diamond also had a close call with being lost forever in a brazen heist in 2019.
The Dresden Green, as it is known, is an almond-shaped 41-carat natural green diamond. Mined in India, it is the largest known naturally green diamond in the world and likely the finest as well. Its unusual soft apple-green, often called celadon, is the result of exposure to natural radioactive materials. The Dresden Green is not only rare in its color but for its VS1 clarity, showing no visible inclusions. And, in 1988, it was determined that the diamond is a extremely rare Type IIA, one of the purest diamonds to exist which contains little or no impurities. It is thought to be possible flawless. The diamond is surrounded by two large diamonds and 411 smaller clear diamonds.
The exact origins of the Dresden Green are unknown but there is evidence that it was presented to King George of England in 1722 who turned it down. It eventually found its way to the Royal Court of Saxony. As Dresden was the capital of Saxony, the diamond was named after the region. In the mid 1700’s it was obtained by Augustus III of Poland and in 1768 it was re-set into a hat ornament by Franz Michel Diespach, which is how it is displayed today.
For the last 200 years it has resided in Dresden where it has been on display at Dresden Castle. In 2000, the jewel was displayed at the New York Harry Winston store before going on exhibit at the Smithsonian where it shared the spotlight with the Hope Diamond.
Years later in 2019 the Dresden Green made a return trip to the U.S. to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fortunately timed, since back in Dresden thieves broke into the New Green Vault at the Dresden Castle and made off with millions of dollars in jewels artifacts.
No one can put an exact dollar value on the stone, but its size and extremely rare clarity of the Dresden Green Diamond likely puts it in the hundreds of millions.
Photo Credits : Художник992, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
