# The Hope Diamond > Unrecorded Indian cutters; recut for Louis XIV by the court jeweller Sieur Pitau, and recut again by an unknown hand between 1792 and 1812 - Mined in India, probably at the Kollur workings in the Golconda field, before 1668; cut for Louis XIV in 1673; recut to its present form between 1792 and 1812 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/hope-diamond-cutters/the-hope-diamond/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-15 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded Indian cutters; recut for Louis XIV by the court jeweller Sieur Pitau, and recut again by an unknown hand between 1792 and 1812 - **Date:** Mined in India, probably at the Kollur workings in the Golconda field, before 1668; cut for Louis XIV in 1673; recut to its present form between 1792 and 1812 - **Medium:** Type IIb boron-bearing diamond, fancy deep greyish-blue, cushion antique brilliant cut, in a platinum and diamond mount - **Dimensions:** 45.52 carats; 25.60 x 21.78 x 12.00 mm (Gemological Institute of America, December 1988) - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** Indian, before 1668; European settings 1673 to 1911 - **Current location:** National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A 45.52 carat deep greyish-blue diamond, mined in India before 1668, sold to Louis XIV by the merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, cut in 1673 into the stone the French crown called the Diamant bleu de la Couronne, stolen from the Garde-Meuble in September 1792, recut by an unknown hand, recorded in London in September 1812, named after the banker who owned it by 1839, and given to the Smithsonian by Harry Winston in 1958, who sent it through the post.Attached to it is a curse. The curse is folklore and it is merchandising. It was assembled from newspaper stories around 1909 to 1911, deployed by Pierre Cartier as a selling device, and turned into a film serial by a former owner's wife in 1921. It has no seventeenth or eighteenth century pedigree and the Smithsonian does not repeat it. This record states its origins once and then leaves it alone, because the documented chain is more remarkable than the invented one.The single most important thing to know about this object is that it has been three different objects. The stone Tavernier drew in 1676, the French Blue of 1673 to 1792, and the Hope as it is today are the same material in three different shapes, and images of all three circulate, along with replicas and computer reconstructions. Getting them confused is the standard error in the literature. In 2009 a lead cast of the French Blue, catalogued and forgotten in a Paris museum, made it possible to prove the relationship instead of assuming it. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **before 1668-1668 or 1669** Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689), merchant `[documented]` (acquisition in India) Obtained in India, conventionally at the Kollur workings in the Golconda field. Tavernier published an engraved plate of the stone in Les Six Voyages (1676), which is the earliest image of the object and records its shape before any European recutting. The precise circumstances of his acquisition are not documented in the sources consulted; the claim that it was prised from a temple idol is later folklore and appears nowhere in his own account. - **1668 or 1669-September 1792** The Crown of France: Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI `[documented]` (purchase and recutting) Sold to Louis XIV with other stones. Recut, generally dated 1673, by the court jeweller usually named as Sieur Pitau, producing the stone recorded in the crown inventories as the blue diamond of the Crown. Set in 1749 by Andre Jacquemin into an insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece for Louis XV, with the Cote de Bretagne spinel. Figures for the purchase price and for the recut weight vary between sources and are not asserted here. - **11-17 September 1792-September 1812** Unknown `[unknown]` (theft and gap) Taken in the repeated robbery of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne in Paris over several nights in September 1792. Never recovered in its French form. At some point in this twenty-year window it was recut from about 69 carats to about 45, by an unknown hand, in an unknown place, on unknown instructions. No owner is documented for the whole period. The 2009 lead cast paper raises the possibility, from the museum catalogue entry associated with the cast, that Henry Philip Hope owned the French Blue after the theft and before the recutting; that is a suggestion in the published literature, not an established link. - **September 1812-c. 1830** Daniel Eliason, London diamond merchant, and subsequent English owners `[documented]` (reappearance) Recorded in a memorandum by the London diamond merchant John Francillon dated September 1812, describing a blue diamond of 177 grains in Eliason's possession. The date falls two days after the twentieth anniversary of the Garde-Meuble theft, the point at which the French state's claim was extinguished by limitation. Whether that is coincidence or calculation is not established. The subsequent claim that the stone passed to King George IV and was sold after his death in 1830 to meet his debts is widely repeated and is inference rather than record. - **by 1839-1901** Henry Philip Hope (1774-1839) and the Hope family `[documented]` (collection and inheritance dispute) The stone appears in the published catalogue of Henry Philip Hope's gem collection of 1839, which is the source of its name. The inheritance was contested among his nephews. It eventually reached Lord Francis Hope, who held only a life interest and required the permission of the Court of Chancery to sell. Permission was granted and the sale followed in 1901, reported at 29,000 pounds. - **1901-1910 or 1911** A succession of dealers: Adolph Weil, Simon Frankel, Salomon or Selim Habib, Simon Rosenau, Pierre Cartier `[disputed]` (trade) The sequence is broadly agreed but individual links and prices vary between accounts. The frequently repeated claim that the stone belonged to Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire is contradicted by the catalogue of the 1909 Paris sale of the Habib collection, which stated that the Hope was one of only two gems in that collection never owned by the Sultan. Graded disputed on that basis. - **1910 or 1911-1947** Evalyn Walsh McLean (1886-1947), Washington DC `[documented]` (purchase) Sold by Pierre Cartier in a setting Cartier made, which is substantially the present mount. McLean initially rejected the stone and Cartier reset it; when she declined to complete, Cartier sued her, and the dispute was settled. She held it until her death in 1947. Prices reported for the sale vary and are not asserted here. - **1949-10 November 1958** Harry Winston Inc., New York `[documented]` (purchase of the McLean jewels) Winston bought the McLean collection in 1949, after her death and in the course of settling her estate. Reported figures for that purchase cover the whole collection rather than the Hope alone. He exhibited the stone in his travelling Court of Jewels shows before giving it away. - **10 November 1958-present** Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC `[documented]` (donation) Given by Harry Winston, who sent it from New York by registered first-class mail in a plain brown paper package insured for one million dollars. The recorded cost of the mailing is 145.29 dollars, of which 2.44 dollars was postage and the balance insurance. It was delivered by a postman named James Todd. Catalogue number NMNH 217868. The wrapping survives. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - The Hope Diamond has never been sold at public auction and is not for sale. It is the property of the Smithsonian Institution. Every price in this record is a private transaction reported at second hand: 29,000 pounds in 1901, and various figures for the dealer sales of 1901 to 1911 and for the Winston purchase of 1949, which covered the whole McLean collection and not the Hope alone. None of them is a hammer price and none of them was published by an auction house. Prices for other large blue diamonds sold at auction are premium-inclusive totals and are not comparable to any figure in this chain. ## Open questions - Who recut the French Blue between 1792 and 1812, where, and on whose instructions? The single most consequential act in the object's history is entirely undocumented. - Is the 19 September 1812 dating of the Francillon memorandum, two days after the French state's twenty-year limitation expired, coincidence or calculation? No document establishes either. - Did Henry Philip Hope own the French Blue before it was recut? The 2009 lead cast paper raises the possibility from the museum's catalogue entry; it has not been established. - Is the passage through King George IV documented, or is it inference? It is repeated in almost every account and this record has found no primary support for it. - What did Tavernier actually pay, and what did Louis XIV actually pay him? Figures for the sale price vary widely between accounts and none has been verified here against a primary document. - Has France ever asserted a claim to the stone? No claim by the French state or the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle has been found in the sources consulted, and the absence of one for an object stolen from a national collection is itself notable. - What is the stone insured for? No published insurance or appraisal value has been found. ## Sources - [10] Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Hope Diamond collection and exhibition pages. NOTE: si.edu and naturalhistory.si.edu returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching at the time of writing (a bot block, not a dead link) and the physical data here is carried on secondary authority pending direct citation. - [11] Francois Farges, Scott Sucher, Herbert Horovitz and Jean-Marc Fourcault, 'The French Blue and the Hope: New Data from the Discovery of a Historical Lead Cast', Gems and Gemology, Spring 2009, Vol. 45, No. 1. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Hope Diamond', consolidating the ownership chain, the 1812 Francillon memorandum, the Hope family litigation, the Habib and Cartier links, the McLean lawsuit and the 1958 mailing. TERTIARY, flagged for replacement with Richard Kurin, Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gem (2006), and with the Smithsonian's own published record. - [13] Wikimedia Commons file record for the 1958 United States Post Office Department photograph of the package in which the Hope Diamond was mailed to the Smithsonian. - [14] Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages (1676), engraved plate of the notable diamonds, reproduced on Wikimedia Commons and examined directly for this record for the three views and the inscribed carat weight. - [15] Smithsonian Institution, 'History of the Hope Diamond', the museum's own published record of the stone. Read through the Internet Archive capture of 10 January 2026 because si.edu and naturalhistory.si.edu refuse automated requests: a plain GET, a GET with a browser user agent, WebFetch and the in-app browser were all met with HTTP 403 or a bot-verification wall. - [16] Centre des monuments nationaux, Hotel de la Marine, 'Ils ont vole les joyaux de la Couronne', the institutional account of the September 1792 robbery of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, published by the body that now runs the building it happened in. - [17] Georges Sangnier, 'L'affaire des Diamants de la Couronne a Abbeville', Revue du Nord, tome 29, no. 114, April to June 1947, pp. 118-140, consulted in full text on Persee. Used here only for the arrests, condemnations, executions and the acquittal that followed the robbery; the article does not discuss the blue diamond. - [18] Agence France-Presse, 'US has Sun King's stolen gem, say French experts', 18 November 2008, reporting Francois Farges on the lead cast, on how sure he was that the Hope is the recut French Blue and on the likelihood of a French request for the diamond's return. PRESS. - [19] Biodiversity Heritage Library, 'From Jean-Baptiste Tavernier to the Smithsonian: Tracing the History of the Hope Diamond', October 2017, for the date of the Francillon memorandum and its location in the George F. Kunz Collection at the USGS Libraries. TERTIARY, cited only for those two facts. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.