NEW COLLECTION OF DIAMONDS AT AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
The American Museum of Natural History unveiled a display of 25 dazzling diamonds for public view on Tuesday, September 15 in the Museum’s Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems. The hardest known material, diamonds are minerals, a crystalline substance that is the transparent form of pure carbon, naturally formed in the Earth’s interior and shot to the surface by volcanoes.
Diamonds in the exhibit include:
- an intense pink brilliant set in gold with small pink diamonds, all from the Argyle Mine in Australia, designed by Carvin French;
- a round, brilliant-cut, 5.4-carat diamond pendant surrounded by 20 sapphires in white gold, designed in California in 1960;
- five vivid, colored diamonds—representing blue-green, orange-yellow, purplish-pink, blue, and orange gems—from the Olympia Diamond Collection, on loan from Scarselli Diamonds and curated for Scarselli by gemologist Joshua Sheby;
- laboratory-grown diamonds from the Apollo Diamond Corporation, created using the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique whereby diamonds are produced by adding a gas mixture to a heated chamber containing so-called seed material. The display will include stages of growth of CVD diamonds and a blue diamond modified by the addition of boron for use as a semiconductor;
- and laboratory-grown diamonds from the Gemesis Corporation, produced using the high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) technique in large presses. Examples include uncut and cut diamonds and a cultured pearl necklace with a pendant featuring a 2.01-carat cultured yellow diamond surrounded by a pave of natural white diamonds.
The diamond case is curated by George Harlow, Curator of the Museum’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
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