50 Fun Facts About Jewelry

The Mohs hardness scale used for gemstones was introduced in 1812 by a mineralogist of which nationality?

Friedrich Mohs ranked ten reference minerals by which could scratch which, and the scale is still the standard shorthand for gem durability.

Which mineral sits at 1, the softest point, on the Mohs scale?

It can be scratched with a fingernail; gypsum is 2, calcite 3 and fluorite 4 on the same scale.

Rubies get their red colour from traces of which element?

The same aluminium-oxide mineral with different trace metals gives every other colour of the gem family, including the rare pink-orange padparadscha.

Which gemstone is the modern birthstone for September?

Peridot belongs to August, opal to October and topaz to November on the same list.

How many carats does the Hope Diamond weigh?

Under ultraviolet light the stone glows with an eerie red phosphorescence, one of the traits used to identify it.

Trace amounts of which element give the Hope Diamond its blue colour?

Blue diamonds of this type make up only about 0.1% of gem diamonds; nitrogen, by contrast, tints stones yellow.

To which institution was the Hope Diamond donated in 1958?

It came from the Kollur Mine in India and was sold to Louis XIV in 1668 before the French Revolution scattered the royal jewels; it has been in Washington since 1958.

Which jeweller first lent jewels to actresses for the 1944 Oscars and later donated the Hope Diamond?

Jennifer Jones was the first actress he dressed; he owned the blue diamond for a decade before giving it away in 1958.

Which French traveller bought the rough Hope Diamond in India and sold it to Louis XIV?

After recutting, the stone was known at the French court simply as the French Blue.

The Cullinan Diamond, the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, weighed how many carats?

Cutting it produced 9 major stones plus 96 minor brilliants, and took three people eight months at 14 hours a day.

The Cullinan Diamond was named after what?

Thomas Cullinan owned the mine; the stone itself was sent to Britain in a plain box by registered post while a decoy went by ship.

Cullinan I, the Great Star of Africa, is mounted in which piece of the British regalia?

At 530.4 carats it is the largest cut clear diamond in the world; its 317.4-carat sibling Cullinan II sits in the Imperial State Crown.

What does the name Koh-i-Noor mean?

The name is Persian; the stone now weighs 105.6 carats after being recut in the 1850s.

In 1937 the Koh-i-Noor was set into which piece of British regalia?

It is on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London, and India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have all demanded its return.

The 1849 treaty that ceded the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria was signed in which city?

It was signed on behalf of the 11-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh after the Second Anglo-Sikh War.

An 18-karat gold ring is what percentage gold by mass?

Karat is simply parts out of 24, so 24 karat is pure gold, allowed in trade at a minimum of 99.95%.

Sterling silver contains what percentage of pure silver?

That is why sterling pieces are stamped 925: the number is parts per thousand.

The word 'hallmark' derives from the London headquarters of which guild?

The date-letter system that lets collectors pin down a piece's year was introduced there in 1478.

The 1300 English statute that began hallmarking required silver to be marked with which animal's head?

The mark still identifies the London assay office today; the sterling standard the statute enforced was 92.5% silver.

Which symbol is the assay office mark for Birmingham on British hallmarks?

Sheffield uses a Yorkshire rose; the four UK assay offices are London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Edinburgh.

What was the first Fabergé imperial egg, made in 1885, called?

Its plain white enamel shell was just 65 mm across and opened to reveal a golden yolk, then a hen inside that.

In what year was Tiffany & Co. founded in New York?

The firm began as Tiffany, Young and Ellis at 259 Broadway, and its signature blue was later standardised with Pantone as '1837 Blue'.

The 1886 Tiffany Setting ring holds the diamond off the band with how many prongs?

Lifting the stone lets light in from all sides, which is why the design became the template for the modern solitaire.

Which luxury group bought Tiffany & Co. in 2021 for about $15.8 billion?

The same group had bought Bulgari in 2011.

Which king called Cartier 'the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers'?

The house was founded in Paris in 1847 by Louis-François Cartier and is now part of the Swiss Richemont group.

Cartier designed its first flat wristwatch in 1904 for which pioneering aviator?

He had complained that a pocket watch was useless while flying; the resulting square-bezel watch still bears his name.

Which copywriter coined the slogan 'A Diamond Is Forever' for De Beers in 1947?

She worked for the agency N. W. Ayer & Son, and the line went on to be named the slogan of the century.

The first well-documented diamond engagement ring was given in 1477 by which archduke?

He was betrothed to Mary of Burgundy at the imperial court in Vienna.

On an Irish Claddagh ring, what does the crown symbolise?

The two clasped hands stand for friendship, and how the ring is worn signals whether the wearer is single, attached, engaged or married.

The Black Prince's Ruby in the Imperial State Crown is not a ruby at all but what?

The crown also carries 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds and 5 actual rubies.

Who attacked the elderly keeper and stole a crown, sceptre and orb from the Tower of London in 1671?

The regalia he grabbed had only recently been remade, since most of the old set was melted into coin after the Civil War.

The word 'diamond' comes from a Greek word meaning what?

Despite the name, a diamond will burn in pure oxygen at around 690 to 840 °C with a pale blue flame.

The GIA diamond colour scale begins with which letter?

The first three letters were skipped so the new scale would not be confused with older grading systems; the scale runs down to Z.

One carat, the unit used to weigh gems, equals how many milligrams?

The word traces back through Arabic to the Greek for a carob seed, and a carat is divided into 100 points.

Emerald is a green variety of which mineral?

Its internal fissures are called 'jardin', French for garden, because of their mossy look.

Richard Burton bought the La Peregrina pearl for Elizabeth Taylor at auction in 1969 for how much?

Taylor once lost it in a Las Vegas hotel and found it in the mouth of her puppy; it sold for more than $11 million in 2011.

Elizabeth Taylor sold the Taylor-Burton Diamond in 1979 to build a hospital in which country?

Cartier had bought the pear-shaped stone at auction for $1,050,000, and Burton bought it from Cartier the next day.

The Pink Star diamond set an auction record in Hong Kong in 2017 when it sold for roughly how much?

The 59.60-carat stone was mined by De Beers in 1999 and renamed the CTF Pink Star by its buyer, Chow Tai Fook.

Opal is the national gemstone of which country?

The country supplies 95 to 97% of the world's precious opal, and Lightning Ridge is the main source of black opal.

Tanzanite is the blue-violet variety of which mineral?

It is found only in a mining strip about 7 km long near the Mererani Hills and shows strong trichroism, appearing blue, violet or burgundy depending on the angle.

Amber, used in jewellery for millennia, is what?

The Greek word for it, elektron, gave us the word 'electric' because rubbed amber holds a static charge.

The colour-changing gem alexandrite was named in honour of which future Russian emperor?

Fine stones look green in daylight and red under incandescent light; the variety belongs to the mineral chrysoberyl.

Myanmar supplies more than 70% of the world's high-quality what?

The finest emerald-green grade is called imperial, and in China the material historically outranked gold and silver in status.

The 189.62-carat Orlov diamond was set into the imperial sceptre of which Russian ruler in 1774?

Legend says the stone was prised from the eye of a Hindu temple statue by a deserting French soldier in 1747; it is still in the Kremlin's Diamond Fund.

The Kimberley Process, which certifies rough diamonds as conflict-free, came into effect in what year?

It grew out of a May 2000 meeting in Kimberley and a UN General Assembly resolution later that year.

Excluding the tiny culet facet, how many facets does a modern round brilliant-cut diamond have?

Marcel Tolkowsky worked out the ideal proportions for brilliance and fire mathematically in 1919.

The oldest known jewellery, roughly 100,000 years old, was made from what?

The English word itself descends from the Latin jocale, meaning plaything.

For about how much did the Sunrise Ruby sell at auction in 2015?

Its $30 million price was a record for a coloured gemstone at the time. For centuries the Mogok Valley of Upper Burma was the world's chief source of the finest 'pigeon blood' stones.

The word 'jewel' traces back to the Latin 'jocale', meaning what?

It reached English via the Old French 'jouel'.

In Sanskrit, the word for ruby, 'ratnaraj', means what?

Rubies have been treasured for millennia and rank among the most highly valued precious gemstones.