Owners Amazed By Rare Victorian Yellow Diamond Ring Worth Five Figures | Antiques Roadshow UK
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All valuations were correct at the time of broadcast. Jewellery specialist Joanna Hardy examines a rare Victorian family heirloom centred on a striking four-carat hand-cut yellow diamond dating to around 1890. Once part of a much larger jewellery set passed down through generations, the impressive stone reveals a shocking auction estimate. Filmed at Battle Abbey in East Sussex in 2019.
Now, I have one ring here and I have two owners.
No, I am the owner. She would like to be, but I am the owner.
The only reason she's the owner is because she's much older than me.
Not that much older.
This ring was part of a much bigger set of jewellery
with a tiara and necklaces, surtois, bracelets, I think, as well.
And it was passed down through the family.
By the time it got to my family, we didn't have all of it, but we had quite a lot.
I mean, we certainly had the tiara and stuff like that.
But my parents sold a lot of it.
Yeah, because they were broke.
Yeah, so they sold quite a lot of it, but they kept the class.
And whether they had it made into a ring or whether it was a ring already,
I'm not really entirely sure.
Interesting. Now, we all think of diamonds as white.
And, of course, a white diamond is pure carbon.
The reason why a diamond is yellow is because it has nitrogen
that's got caught up in the carbon when it was first formed.
Right.
Billions of years ago, deep within the Earth's crust.
So are yellow diamonds rarer?
Yes, they're rarer than white diamonds, yes.
It's a very clean stone.
There's very little inclusions inside the stone that I can see.
And it's a large size. It's about four carats in size.
What I like about this stone is that it is almost like a cushion cut,
which means that it hasn't got the exact proportions
of a modern brilliant cut that we see today.
I personally love that because that is showing the hand of the craftsman,
the hand of the cutter.
So it's been sort of hand cut.
It's been hand cut. Absolutely.
And that will take many months of craftsmanship.
So it's been made by a real craftsman.
Absolutely. It's been cut in about 1890, that sort of period.
And it is then set with white diamonds around.
And that's lovely because it's sort of enhancing
the yellow diamond in the centre.
And you've got 18-carat gold and you have platinum on top.
Right.
So I would say, at auction, you'd be looking in the region
of about £10,000 to £15,000.
Nice. Duke, we are so going out to dinner.
Wow, that's fantastic. Thank you so much.