From earth to elegance_ The story of the glowing rose diamond _ Sotheby s

This stone is a miracle of nature, to find a diamond that is of this size, this strength of saturation without a secondary hue, freedom from inclusions, an excellent polish and an excellent symmetry, you can't ask for better than that. The Glowing Rose is a vivid pink diamond weighing 10.08 carats. When you get a pink that really screams, you don't see many of them, when you get a really lovely Candy Floss Pink, you just think, how has that happened? The majority of diamonds which are mined show no colour at all. The ones which do show colour account for less than 1% of those diamonds mined. This diamond has been graded as a Type IIa diamond. Type IIa diamonds show little to no nitrogen within the matrix, which is extremely rare. And what's important to note about these stones is that quite often they show a very fine purity, therefore a lack of inclusions within the stone, and often a very even colour distribution such as we have here. There's little understanding as to how pink diamonds are formed. With the majority of coloured diamonds, there will often be a trace element present within the crystal lattice, so for yellow diamonds you would have nitrogen present, for blue diamonds you would have boron, and pinks are unusual for the fact that there's not a huge amount of understanding as to why these diamonds show as pink. The most common theory is that this is down to plastic deformation, which is due to intense pressure deep within the earth, and this causes a distortion within the crystal lattice, which means that when light enters the stone, it shows as a pink hue. Diamonds can be graded from a faint or a light colour. As the saturation increases, you come to a grading called Fancy Vivid, which is the most desirable because that is really the strongest saturation that you will see. When you're mounting a diamond, you have to be really aware of the characteristics of that stone. There are several elements that you need to take into consideration, so you need to look at mounting a stone wisely so that it shows the colour to its best advantage, you need to look at the security of the stone itself, because for a diamond of this importance, you don't want a flimsy mount, and you need colours that will really complement the stone itself, and so what Boodles have created here is an elegant mount, which speaks to the rarity of the stone. It allows the stone to speak for itself without a lot of distraction around it. You have something that just does all the talking, a 10 carat pink. I mean, how do you add value to something so valuable? This is always going to be a ring in my mind, something so special, slightly elongated, 10 carat, dream size for a ring. The process of mounting a 10 carat vivid pink diamond, first of all, you do just want to have a look at the structure of the stone. It's VVS2, there's very little instability in a stone like this. The process takes a couple of weeks. There's an element of anxiety or excitement at the same time as setting it, because the whole thing comes alive once it's been set. You then see, wow, the diamonds always look bigger once they're set. The Boodles mount is a really elegant shape. You have some lovely diamonds set on the shoulders. It really allows the diamond to stand front and centre. Pinks, when they come up, they're always exciting. This is certainly the rarest pink diamond that Boodles has ever mounted. When you see it, it's like a fancy vivid pink of its own variety, its own category. It's extremely rare for any pink diamond of this size to be coming for sale at auction. Very few have ever been offered at auction before, and so we're thrilled to be offering this today.