By Victoria GomelskyVictoria Gomelsky
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Among gemologists, the world’s biggest diamonds are more than just portable forms of extreme wealth—they’re windows into the earth’s deeper mantle.
Known as “CLIPPIR” diamonds—the acronym stands for “Cullinan-like, Large, Inclusion-Poor, Pure, Irregular, and Resorbed”—these raw stones originate at depths of 224 to 466 miles (yes, miles!), ferrying messages in the form of mineral inclusions from beneath the earth’s rigid tectonic plates to the surface, like brilliant canaries from an impossibly deep coal mine.
For laypeople, however, these remarkable rocks are impressive for a host of more obvious reasons, starting with their hefty sizing not to mention their near pricelessness.
Even more fascinating than their superlative characteristics is the fact that in recent years, big diamonds have been discovered with increasing frequency. The jewelry trade publication JCK explained it succinctly: “It’s because technology has made it easier to locate them.”
Below, we highlight the 10 largest diamonds ever discovered, in ascending order. While not all are CLIPPIRs, they are, collectively, an impressive bunch—until that is, they are unseated.
10. The Lesotho Legend, 910 Carats
In the world of diamonds, a Type IIa designation is the ultimate bragging right. The gemological classification denotes chemically pure diamonds with spectacular limpidity (known as “gems of the first water” in archaic gem trade lingo).
The 910-carat Lesotho Legend—found in Lesotho’s Letseng mine in 2018—has all that and more, including a perfect D color and beautiful crystallization, which helps explain why Van Cleef & Arpels has since acquired it.
9. The Star of Sierra Leone, 969 Carats
After the 968.90-carat Star of Sierra Leone Diamond was discovered in 1972 in the country’s Koidu district, Harry Winston purchased the rough for $2.3 million and broke it into 17 smaller diamonds.
With the help of the cutters at Lazare Kaplan, the jeweler shaped the largest of the 13 flawless stones into a 53.96-carat pear-shaped diamond. Six cuts from the original rough were later set into the “Star of Sierra Leone” brooch.
8. The Excelsior, 995 Carats
The 995.20-carat Excelsior Diamond is the only jumbo rock on this list discovered in the 19th century (a picture of the rough does not exist). Unearthed in South Africa in 1893, the diamond held the record for the largest diamond in the world for 12 years, when the Cullinan dethroned it.
The rock was cleaved into a whopping 21 gems, the largest 11 of which were known as Excelsior I-XI.
In 1996, Robert Mouawad—the Lebanese businessman whose name graces the Gemological Institute of America’s headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif.—acquired the 69.68-carat pear-shaped Excelsior I for the Mouawad collection.
7. Diamond From Karowe, Botswana, 998 Carats
The Canadian miner Lucara Diamond Corp. is the undisputed king of big diamonds thanks to its 100 percent-owned Karowe mine in Botswana. Located on the northern edge of the Kalahari Desert, the mine, whose name means “precious stone” in the Setswana language of Botswana, came on stream in 2012.
Since then, it has produced a steady flow of exceptional—and exceptionally large—Type IIa diamonds.
Case in point: In November 2020, Lucara recovered a 998-carat white diamond at Karowe. At the time, the gem ranked as the fifth-largest diamond ever found. (Read on to learn which rocks unseated it.)
6. Diamond From Karowe, Botswana, 1,080 Carats
Last month, Lucara announced the discovery of yet another 1,000+ carater at its Karowe mine—1,080.1 carats, to be exact. And Type IIa at that.
It’s the fourth diamond of over 1,000 carats recovered from the mine since 2015. (See Nos. 2, 3, and 4 on this list for details.)
5. Diamond From Jwaneng, Botswana, 1,098 Carats
In the Setswana language, Jwaneng, the richest diamond mine in the world by value, means “a place of small stones.” That was hardly the case in June 2021, when the mine’s owner, Debswana—a 50-50 partnership between De Beers and the government of Botswana—recovered a 1,098.3-carat “high gem-quality” rough stone.
4. Lesedi La Rona, 1,109 Carats
In November 2015, the Karowe mine yielded a stunner: the 1,109-carat rough that would soon be christened the Lesedi La Rona, which translates as “our light” in Setwana. Two years later, the stone made news when Graff Diamonds purchased it for $53 million, or $47,777 per carat.
After an 18-month cutting process, performed in-house, the Graff Lesedi La Rona weighed in at 302.37 carats, making it the largest highest color, highest clarity diamond ever certified by the GIA, and the world’s largest square emerald cut diamond.
3. Diamond From Karowe, Botswana, 1,175 Carats
Lucara discovered this 1,174.76-carat diamond in 2021, less than a week after the 1,098-carat diamond noted above was unearthed. Citing its new X-ray technology, which prevents oversized rocks from getting crushed during the excavation process, the miner said in June 2021 that it had produced 17 diamonds greater than 100 carats, including five diamonds weighing more than 300 carats.
As JCK noted, “The record books are getting mighty crowded.”
2. The Louis Vuitton Sewelô Diamond, 1,758 Carats
The 1,758-carat Sewelô holds the title of the second-largest rough diamond ever discovered. Unearthed at—say it with us—the Karowe mine in Botswana, the tennis-ball-sized rock emerged from the process unbroken, a feat that Lucara attributed to its state-of-the-art XRT technology, which helps the company recover diamond-bearing rock without crushing it.
Described as a “near gem quality” diamond with “domains of high-quality white gem,” the Sewelô—the name means “rare find” in the Setswana language of Botswana—is covered in a thin layer of black carbon, which lends the stone an intriguing sheen.
In 2020, Louis Vuitton announced that it had purchased the diamond for an undisclosed sum and was partnering with Lucara and the HB Company of Antwerp to study the stone in order to assess how it could obtain the optimum yield of individual finished, cut and polished diamonds. The company also said that it plans “to use the extraordinary variety and abundance within the Sewelô to offer clients the opportunity to create bespoke, custom-cut diamonds.”
1. The Cullinan Diamond, 3,106 Carats
With a weight of 3,106 carats, the Cullinan is the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found.
Discovered at the Premier No. 2 mine in Cullinan, South Africa, on Jan. 26, 1905, it was named after Thomas Cullinan, the chairman of the mining company. Celebrated for its blue-white color and exceptional clarity (in trademark CLIPPIR fashion), the rough stone was cut by the Asschers of Amsterdam, the leading cutters of their day, in what can only be described as a Herculean cutting effort.
The Royal Collection Trust, custodians of Britain’s Royal Collection, including the Crown Jewels, where the Cullinan and its many spawn reside, conveys the magnitude of that effort on its website:
“It took four days to prepare the groove for the cleaving knife, and the very first blow broke the knife rather than the diamond. Over the next eight months, three men worked for 14 hours a day to cut and polish nine large stones from the original diamond.Each of these stones was given a number from I to IX, and today they are still referred to in this way.97 small brilliants and some unpolished fragments were also created.”
Authors
Victoria Gomelsky
Victoria Gomelsky is editor-in-chief of the jewelry trade publication JCK and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Robb Report. Her freelance work has appeared in AFAR, WSJ Magazine, The…
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- Cullinan
- Lesedi La Rona
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