subject: Ring Around The Rare Green Diamonds [print this page] Israeli diamantaire and entrepreneur Lev Leviev has managed to create not one, but two rings featuring the rarest of rare colored diamonds green diamonds.
The Leviev Ring, which was on sale at his Bond St. shop in London, features the largest natural fancy intense green diamond graded to date by the Gemological Institute of America. The green diamond, which weights 8.61 carats, has been in Leviev's possession since it was mined.
Expert jewelers set the green stone, officially known as the Largest Natural Fancy Green Diamond, in an 18 karat yellow and pink gold ring, surrounded by round brilliants bearing the color grade Fancy Vivid Pink. Together, the green diamond and the pink diamonds form a gemstone flower, with the warm hue of the pinks setting off the unusual, intense shade of the green diamond in the center.
In another green diamond design coup, Leviev's jewelers have created another ring featuring a chameleon a yellowish-grayish-green diamond whose color changes depending on the light and heat to which it's exposed. The chameleon green diamond weighs 5.89 carats and is set next to 1.68 carats of oval diamonds and 1.05 carats of pink and white diamonds.
The chameleon yellowish-grayish-green diamond carries is valued at $2.1 million.
Only a very few true green diamonds are known to exist in the world today these include the Ocean Dream diamond, which weighs 5.51 carats and is the only green diamond to carry a GIA color grade of Fancy Deep Blue-Green. The Dresden Green Diamond is an apple-green colored diamond weighing 41 carats and features a transparency that makes it one of the most important fancy colored diamonds in existence.
Green diamonds receive their color as a result of exposure to naturally occurring radiation. A number of experiments over the years have proved that additional irradiation can enhance the color of Green Diamonds, as well as other colored diamonds. In fact, the Ocean Dream was at one point believed to have been artificially irradiated until examination proved that its color was natural.
Designating a diamond as a "true green" can be tricky. Many famous diamonds the Regent diamond, the Porter Rhodes diamond, the Jubilee diamond have at one point been considered "green diamonds" but have since had their color grades altered to more accurately reflect their yellow or brown hues, as the case may be.
Green diamonds' natural irradiation has served as scientific fodder for research into fields as diverse as astrophysics, chemistry, thermal conductivity, and astronomy much of which has been conducted at the California Institute of Technology.
