There are high-quality diamonds, and then there are diamonds that are in a class so unique that the usual vocabulary of the trade barely applies. The luxurious, vibrant blue-green Ocean Dream, which sold yesterday (May 13) at Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction in Geneva for $17.3 million, is one of the latter. This 5.51-carat triangle-cut stone has such an improbable color that, as the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) notes in its materials, some might assume it has been artificially enhanced.
But the stone’s unique and eye-catching color is not a man-made phenomenon of chemistry. Tom Moses, GIA’s executive vice president and head of laboratories and research, was involved with the original cut of Ocean Dream more than 20 years ago and has examined and cataloged it several times since. “Blue-green diamonds are extremely rare because their color depends on a very specific set of natural conditions,” he told the Observer. In diamonds like the Ocean Dream, the blue-green color is caused by exposure to natural radiation near the Earth’s surface over millions of years – a geological event so uncommon that no other natural diamond of the same color and size has been recorded. In fact, Ocean Dream is the largest diamond of its kind to have been graded by the GIA since the organization was founded in 1931.
There are only a few hundred outstanding natural blue diamonds in the world; Perhaps 300 green diamonds exceed just one carat. Blue-green stones are extremely rare. (The Ocean Paradise diamond, owned by the Nahshonov group, is another natural blue-green diamond, but nowhere near as deep in color and weighs only a fraction of a carat.) These stones are difficult to work with, according to Moses, precisely because of the characteristics that give them their brilliant color: “The radiation often does not fully penetrate the diamond, which makes the cutting process particularly delicate, as the cutter must maintain the color while also balancing shape, weight and brilliance.”
In its raw form—the 11.7-carat, mined in central Africa in the 1990s—Ocean Dream was acquired by New York’s Cora Diamond Corporation, which commissioned master cutter Sailam’s appearance to shape it into a modified brilliant triangle shape. The stone made its first public appearance in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, “The splendor of diamonds“In 2003, it was displayed alongside six of the most extraordinary diamonds on Earth: the Red Moussaieff, the De Beers Millennium Star, the Pumpkin Diamond, the Blue Heart of Eternity, the Vivid Yellow Allnut Diamond, and the Steinmetz Pink Star. After the exhibition closed, Ocean Dream disappeared from public display, only occasionally appearing in collectors’ conversations.
The stunning result in Geneva is what happens when an unparalleled stone returns to the market that has spent more than a decade remembering it. Christie’s score nearly doubles the $9.8 million it brought in the auction house’s 2014 Fine Jewels sale, setting a new world record for blue-green diamonds. “The result achieved by Christie’s reflects the continuing demand for exceptional natural colored diamonds,” Moses said. “Collectors at this level are looking for gems with beautiful, unique characteristics and stories.”
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