Unique rough and polished diamonds of ALROSA to be exhibited at the State Historical Museum

The exhibition "The Way of the Diamond. A miracle of nature and a man-made masterpiece", dedicated to the history of diamond mining in Russia, diamond cutting technologies and the skill of jewelers, will open in the State Historical Museum on May 30.
According to the press service of ALROSA, among the main exhibits are the famous diamond "Matryoshka" and a stand with a story about the most expensive Russian diamond worth two billion rubles.
The first diamond deposits of Russia were discovered by geologists in the middle of the XX century in Yakutia – an amazing northern region, where the temperature in winter drops below 60 degrees Celsius. Today, about one in four diamonds in the world is mined in Russia, and ALROSA is the only company in the world that not only mines diamonds, but also facets them into magnificent diamonds and creates jewelry with them.
The pinnacle of craftsmanship is the famous "Russian cut" – diamonds of a classic round shape with perfect proportions. Despite the introduction of new technologies, the skill of the cutter still plays a key role in the complex and time-consuming cutting process.
"Diamonds are called "fragments of stars" and "frozen tears of the gods." These amazing crystals, created by nature itself, have attracted people for many centuries with their magical beauty. As part of our exhibition, we will show the entire path that a diamond goes from the moment of extraction to its transformation into a shining diamond and a beautiful decoration," says Alexey Levykin, director of the Historical Museum.
"For this exhibition, we have collected 60 of the rarest and most amazing diamonds mined in the entire history of ALROSA. Firstly, these are large and colored crystals, most of which are nominative – the fact of their extraction has been assigned the names of outstanding people or events. Secondly, diamonds with a unique morphology are very rare, amazing shapes that are of interest not only to professional gemologists. Including the famous Matryoshka diamond, which got its name due to its unique feature: another gemstone moves freely inside a larger diamond," says Lyudmila Demidova, chief expert and curator of the exhibition from ALROSA.
The exhibition will feature magnificent examples of the work of domestic master-cutters: 30 diamonds, including a 14-carat yellow Pear-shaped diamond. The exposition will also be decorated with replicas of the most expensive and largest diamonds ever cut in Russia: a 14.8-carat pink diamond The Spirit of the Rose worth two billion rubles, a 20.7-carat honey-colored diamond The Firebird, as well as the largest in the history of Russian diamond cutting - 100-carat The Spectacle.
The jewelry part of the exhibition will be presented by exclusive collections created by Russian masters of the jewelry group ALROSA. Among them: a collection of jewelry with luminescent diamonds "ALROSA-Luminous" and collections created jointly with the State Hermitage Museum "According to sketches by Carl Faberge" and "Imperium".

Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished