The Most Famous "Heart-Shaped" Jewelry Item on the Planet Today Is?

Originally thought to have come from either South Africa or India, the "Blue Heart" diamond is a 30.62-carat, heart-shaped, blue diamond of exceptional quality. It's dimensions are 20mm x 19mm x 12mm.

Just to get a bit of context, natural blue diamonds surpass all other gemstones for their magnificent beauty. It is this beauty, in combination with their rarity, that make them sought after by jewelers, collectors, and diamond lovers, around the world.

The "Blue Heart" diamond is sometimes referred to as the “Eugenie Blue”, after Empress Eugenie of France, but there is no way she could have owned it. The Empress (who was the consort of Napoleon III) lived in the 1800’s, and the diamond was only discovered in 1908. Having said this, the “Blue Heart” diamond does have a French “connection” so to speak… The rough diamond was cut and polished into it’s popular heart-shaped form by Atanik Ekyanan of Neuilly, Paris in either 1909 or 1910.

The Smithsonian Institution, the current owners of the diamond, have done extensive research into the history of this diamond, and this is what we know about it so far. According to the records of De Beers, it was discovered in the Premier diamond mines of South Africa in November, 1908. At the time, the rough cut of this stone weighed 102 carats. Once it was cut and polished in Paris (as previously noted), it was sold to Cartier’s Jewelers, who set it in a “Lilly of the Valley” corsage and subsequently sold it to an Argentinian woman, Mrs. Unzue. It remained in the Unzue family til 1953 when it was purchased by the firm of Van Cleef & Arpels, who dismantled the corsage, and subsequently set the stone in a pendant, surrounded by 25 white or colorless diamonds. Priced at $300,000, the pendant was sold to an unnamed European family. In 1959 the diamond reappeared into the public eye when Harry Winston acquired it, set it into a platinum ring, and sold it to Marjorie Merriweather Post. Here it was to remain until the 1960’s when she decided to donate it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it remains to this day. It is currently on display in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals, in the National Museum of Natural History.

Now while most of us will never amass the wealth necessary to be able to procure such a wonderful artifact of nature, we can still surround ourselves with beautiful heart-shaped jewelry items of all sorts and sizes. From necklaces, pendants, rings, bracelets or jeweled heart-shaped boxes, there are many companies that specialize in developing and promoting these exquisite forms of jewelry. To find out more about the sources of these items, or to learn more about heart-shaped jewelry or the history of jewelry in general, visit the blog www.beautifulheartjewelry.com