Five or six weeks ago a few of our regular clients and our staff spent a few hours, socially, with Maarten DeWitte, one of Hearts On Fire’s master diamond cutters.  In the course of the evening the conversation, somehow, turned to the Hope diamond and this led Maarten to comment on the diamond’s beauty.  It seems that he had visited the Smithsonian to see it and had been disappointed by its cut (in his words, “a real hack job”), so much so that he told the curator that he would be happy to recut it to “release” the potential beauty that lies within it.  Amazingly enough, the curator was horrified at the idea, even though the diamond has been re-cut at least twice.  Of course, he is not the authority on diamonds  that Maarten is; so his reaction was almost completely predictable.  When a “civilian” thinks about diamonds, it is most often the weight of the gem that concerns him rather than its beauty.  He more or less presumes that all diamonds are cut to the same standard; this engenders the cutter’s dilemma. (more…)

Bernie’s  in the soup, again.  If you’ve been following the news about alleged swindler Bernard Madoff, you know he’s in trouble with the court; but if you’ve not been following it, read on.  He’s been under house arrest for a few weeks, confined to his $7 million apartment while awaiting trial for an alleged $50 billion Ponzi swindle.  Now prosecutors want to throw the 70 year old into the slammer and keep him there until he goes to trial. They contend that, “The defendant showed that he could not be trusted to obey the court’s orders and that no set of conditions could constrain his ability to harm the community.”  What had this Park Avenue desperado done?  Specifically, after the court had frozen all of his assets, he shipped 5 small boxes of jewelry (one of them, alone, valued at more than $1 million) to friends and relatives, some of whom blew the whistle on him to U.S. prosecutors (Were they just being good citizens or had Bernie ticked them off?).  While the Feds see it as an attempt to hide assets, Bernie’s lawyer says it was “just a mistake”, that his client was innocent of any deliberate violation of the court’s order.  (more…)

“Simple Gifts”, a Shaker dance tune, was written in 1848 by Shaker Elder Joseph. It’s a one verse song with lyrics extolling the virtues of the simple life and reading (in part) ” ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free, ‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.” Espousing a self sufficient, communal and celibate life, they might seem strangers to this column, but somehow I feel that the title of the tune connects to the Wittlesbach diamond which was sold, at auction, for approximately $23,500,000 on December 11, 2008. An approximately 36 carat blue-gray gem (almost certainly of Indian origin), a bit of mystery surrounds it, as all the records which may have revealed its origin were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). (more…)