The Blue Heart Diamond

In response to an enquiry from us:

On a visit to you some (20?) years ago, we viewed the famous blue Hope diamond.
Also on display nearby was another, smaller but more attractive blue diamond. Can you provide us with any information about this other stone, please.
Also do you have an image of it available?

Your inquiry of August 10, 2005, regarding a diamond has been received in the Smithsonian's Public Inquiry Mail Service for response.
We believe you are referring to the Portuguese Blue Diamond which is the largest diamond in the collection (127.01 carats). Once owned by Peggy Hopkins Joyce, an actress in the Ziegfield Follies, the diamond is on display in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals in the National Museum of Natural History. Despite its name, it has no documented connection with Portugal.
Under ultraviolet light (light with wavelengths shorter than those of visible light), the famous Portuguese Diamond glows bright blue. This phenomenon, called fluorescence, occurs in many diamonds. But the Portuguese Diamond fluoresces so intensely that a hazy blue tinge can be detected in natural daylight as well as artificial light.
Unfortunately, there is no image available.
We appreciate your interest in the Smithsonian Institution.

Some reports refer to this unusual diamond as the "Eugenie Blue", although it is now recognized that there is no evidence that the Empress ever owned it.
The Blue Heart weighs 30.82 carats and has a rare, deep blue color. The Parisian firm Atanik Ekyanan of Neuilly cut it into a heart shape in 1909 or 1910, and this date raises the issue of whether the rough stone came from Africa or from India. In 1910 Cartier purchased the diamond and sold it to an Argentinean woman named Mrs. Unzue. At the time, it was set in a lily-of-the-valley corsage and remained so until Van Cleef & Arpels bought the gem in 1953. They exhibited it set in a pendant to a necklace valued at $300,000 and sold it to a European titled family. In 1959 Harry Winston acquired the gem, selling it five years later, mounted in a ring, to Marjorie Merriweather Post. Mrs. Post donated the Blue Heart to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., where it remains to this day.

Table of Large Diamonds

Rank	Weight	Name	Colour	Shape
	30.82	Blue Heart (previously Unzue, Couer, and erroneously Eugenie Blue)	Blue	Heart

Coloured Diamonds

Diamond 4C's Tour
Or if you would like to know how quality affects price, please take a look at our price example pages:-
Price v. Quality of a 1 Carat Diamond or
Price v. Quality of a Half Carat Diamond