The largest diamond in the world so far was discovered in the Premier of South Africa on January 27, 1905. It is about the size of a normal human fist, weighing 3107 carats, length 100mm, width 65mm, and thickness 50mm. So far, it is still the largest natural diamond found in the world and has been given a legendary color. The diamond is named "Cullinan".
At the beginning of 1908, Cullinan was sent to Amsterdam, the most authoritative city for diamond polishing at the time, and handed over to Jo Aschar for processing. The breaking work was carried out by the famous Dutch craftsman Jo Aschar. He spent several weeks studying Cullinan, built a glass model according to its size and shape, and designed a set of tools. He first used these tools to test the glass model, and the result was that the model was split as expected.
In the following time, three skilled craftsmen worked 14 hours a day for 8 months. A total of 9 large diamonds and 96 small diamonds were polished. The total weight of 105 diamonds was 1,063.65 carats, which was only 34.25% of the original weight of Cullinan, showing the high loss of diamond cutting. The cut diamonds are all crystal clear and extremely pure.
Next time we will talk about where the 9 Cullinan diamonds go.
