spanish necklace, spanish necklaces
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC is home to so much that’s rare and fantastic in the world. One of the more spectacular collections is the collection of gems in the Museum of Natural History.
There you can see fantastic crystals and minerals in their natural form, as well as some of the most fantastic pieces of jewelry ever created. There are crowns worn by royalty, giant diamond earrings worn by the condemned French queen Marie-Antoinette.
They’re all stunning and awe-inspiring, but nothing is more mysterious than the rare earth-green of the emerald. The Smithsonian is home to the most fabulous emeralds ever known, and we are incredibly fortunate to have them in this country.
One doesn’t normally associate gorgeous jewelry with the time of the Spanish Inquisition. But in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection of gems, there’s an exquisite necklace holder stand and a necklace badge holder of diamonds and emeralds.
It’s a spectacular double row of diamonds and emeralds ending in a chandelier of emeralds. There is unfortunately little information about the provenance of this necklace. The large diamonds and Columbian emeralds were most likely cut in India in the 17th century.
This would make them one of the earliest examples of cut gemstones in the Smithsonian’s Collection. There are actually only legends surrounding this necklace. They indicate that it was worn at times by Spanish and French royalty.
In the early 20th century, it was purchased by the Maharajah of Indore, whose child sold the necklace in 1947 to Harry Winston. Winston afterwards sold the necklace to Mrs. Cora Hubbard Williams of Pittsburgh. She left it to the Smithsonian in 1972.
Emeralds are a form of crystal known as beryls. Beryls are typically clear crystals, but when incorporating chromium or vanadium, they reach various gradations of green. The purest green is the most rare emeralds and many people essentially like an emerald that has a blue-green tint.
Before the 16th century, the only known emerald deposits were in Cleopatra’s Egyptian mines. But after emeralds were discovered in Columbia, those became the gold standard in emeralds.
Columbian emeralds have been discovered by archaeologists among artifacts of such clans as the Inca, Maya, Aztec, Toltec and the lesser-known Chibcha Indians. Emeralds are among the rarest of gemstones and can be costlier per carat than even the finest diamonds!
They are a hard mineral, with a Moh’s hardness scale of 7 or eight ( compared to a diamond’s 10 ). While most emeralds are found in Africa and Russia, there were discoveries of emerald deposits in North Carolina!
