Famous South African Diamonds: The Cullinan and Beyond

South Africa has produced many of the most famous diamonds in history, the Cullinan diamond above all, and the earliest finds set off the country’s industrial age. The stories below are the real ones, with the numbers checked against the historical record, and you can see the collection that honours them in the cellar of Huguenot House.

The Eureka Diamond (1867)

The first recorded South African diamond was found by a fifteen year old boy named Erasmus Jacobs on his family’s farm near Hopetown, on the Orange River. It weighed 21.25 carats, and the family did not know what it was, because nobody expected diamonds in that landscape. It passed through several hands, was identified as a diamond by an expert in Grahamstown, now Makhanda, and was exhibited in Paris at the Exposition Universelle of 1867. The discovery did not start a rush on its own, but it put the word out. The full story of the Eureka diamond, and what it meant for Cape Town, is in Cape Town’s diamond legacy, from the 1867 Eureka discovery.

The Star of South Africa (1869)

The stone that actually started everything was found in 1869 by a Griqua shepherd on the banks of the Orange River, not far from the Eureka find. It weighed 83.5 carats rough, and the shepherd sold it to a neighbouring farmer, Schalk van Niekerk, for 500 sheep, ten oxen and a horse, a fortune at the time; the story of the sale spread faster than the stone did. It was cut into a 47.69 carat pear shape, sold in England and bought by the Countess of Dudley, which is why it is also called the Dudley Diamond. Within months of the find, the diggings on the Vaal River began, and within three years the Kimberley rush had started. The whole sequence is in our history of the Kimberley rush.

The Jagersfontein Giants

The Jagersfontein mine, in the Free State, produced two of the great stones of the 1890s. The Excelsior, found in 1893, weighed 995.2 carats and was the largest known diamond until the Cullinan. Its story is the cautionary one: in 1903 it was cut in Amsterdam into ten smaller stones, none larger than about 68 carats, so the great stone survives only in pieces. The Jubilee, found in 1895, weighed 650.8 carats in the rough and was cut to a 245.35 carat cushion. It was first named the Reitz, after the president of the Orange Free State, and renamed in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The geology behind finds like these is explained in the journey of a diamond.

The Cullinan (1905)

The Cullinan is the largest gem quality diamond ever found, 3,106 carats, and it was found in January 1905 at the Premier Mine near Pretoria by the mine’s surface manager, Frederick Wells. It was named after the mine’s owner, Sir Thomas Cullinan. The Transvaal government bought the rough stone for £150,000 and presented it to King Edward VII in 1907, on his sixty sixth birthday, and the Amsterdam firm of Joseph Asscher was given the cut. The first attempt to split the stone broke the blade and did not break the stone; the second split it clean, as designed. Asscher’s cutters then produced the nine numbered Cullinan stones and ninety six small brilliants over eight months of work.

• Cullinan I, the Great Star of Africa, 530.2 carats, the largest colourless cut diamond in the world, set in the Sovereign’s Sceptre

• Cullinan II, the Second Star of Africa, 317.4 carats, set in the Imperial State Crown

• Cullinan III and IV, 94.4 and 63.6 carats, first set in Queen Mary’s crown in 1911, and later worn together as a brooch

• Cullinan V, an 18.8 carat heart shape, and Cullinan VII, an 8.8 carat marquise, both among the Cullinan stones the British royal family owns privately rather than as Crown Jewels

The museum in Huguenot House tells the Cullinan story in full, with a replica in a cabinet of its own, alongside the story of Mapungubwe’s gold and the other great southern African finds. Visit the museum page for the full list.

Other South African Greats

• The Taylor Burton, a 69.42 carat pear shape cut from a 241 carat rough found at the Premier Mine in 1966, bought by Richard Burton for Elizabeth Taylor in 1969 and sold again after their divorce

• The Golden Jubilee, 545.67 carats, at one time the largest cut diamond in the world, cut from a 755.5 carat brown rough found at the Premier Mine in 1985, and presented to the King of Thailand

• The Niarchos, 128.25 carats, cut from a 426.5 carat rough found at Premier in 1954 and sold to the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos in 1957

South Africa still produces fine stones, and Cape Town still sets them. The modern trade is covered in buying diamonds in Cape Town, and the price structure in diamond prices by carat.

Sources:

• Royal Collection Trust: The Cullinan Diamond

• De Beers Group: Our History

• South African History Online: All That Glitters, the discovery of diamonds and the mineral revolution