The human body is programmed to reach for what it wants. Brain scans have shown that upon seeing something attractive, the part of our brain in charge of moving our hands actually lights up.
In her new book “Stoned” jeweler and scientist Aja Raden chronicles how this desire can change the world — exploring the influence of several of the world’s most beautiful, iconic and important jewels.
Mary’s diamond
Diamonds have an incomprehensible mystique. As Raden, the former head of the auction division of the famed House of Kahn Estate Jewelers, points out, all they are is coal after enough heat and pressure. While they might be the hardest known substance on Earth, they are brittle — a well placed crack over top and they can be easily turned into dust. What’s more, diamonds aren’t even that rare.
What they have is a really good story.
In 1477, the Archduke Maximilian, who would later become the Holy Roman Emperor, presented the Princess Mary of Burgundy with a group of diamonds in the shape of an “M.”
The romantic story is that it was a symbol of love and commitment. But more likely, Raden points out, the archduke wanted to impress his father-in-law with the latest diamond-cutting technology out of Bruges, a region he owned.
While Mary’s gift was the first documented engagement ring, it would take another five centuries for it to catch on with the general public.
Cecil Rhodes, a failed cotton farmer in South Africa, bought up all the Cape Colony region’s diamond mines in the late 1800s. He established a company now know as De Beers, which eventually owned 90% of the Earth’s known diamonds. In order to create an illusion of rarity, De Beers “regulated the flow of diamonds into the market,” Raden explains.
By the 1940s, De Beers was in control of the bulk of the product, but needed to create demand. So they did what any good business does: They hired a really good public-relations team, N.W. Ayer and Son.
The campaign, led by two women, Dorothy Dignam and Frances Gerety, made sure diamonds were given out to Hollywood elite. They diligently circulated the romantic version of the story of the Archduke Maximilian gifting a diamond engagement ring to his love.
When wedding proposals of the rich and famous took place, Dignam peddled images of their accompanying diamond rings to newspapers. Meanwhile, Gerety penned the tag line, “A diamond is forever,” and together, the women created a narrative that made the diamond a worldwide symbol of love.
It was a manipulation we continue to buy into to this day. Raden points to the slogan, “What’s two months’ salary for something that’ll last forever?” It’s what Dignam, Gerety and De Beers convinced us to believe.
Inca’s emerald
“Emeralds don’t sparkle,” Raden writes, “they shine.”
She attributes their wet-looking luster to light waves and the way “their atoms line up and hold hands.” Their green color makes them the rarest of all the so-called beryl crystals. She calls them “a rare and extraordinary phenomenon.”
Many cultures throughout history have agreed. One emerald in particular, even helped create a “new world” — a mythic stone called the Emerald Parrot.
After Queen Isabella of Spain had “discovered” the New World by way of Christopher Columbus, it became clear that to maintain her claim, she would have to populate it with Spaniards. Although the gold and valuable spices she’d been promised were not forthcoming, she had to somehow convince people that there was value across the sea.
“So what do you do when you’ve invested heavily in an endeavor and then begin to realize you may have backed the wrong horse?” Raden asks. “Lie. You lie and you try to make that lie real by making everyone else believe it.”
Soon myths about the Fountain of Youth and cities of gold came pouring back to Spain. In the meantime Isabella ordered the enslavement of the native populations to dig for valuable goods until her made-up truths became actual ones.
“They did, ultimately, find a city of treasure,” Raden writes. “Only it wasn’t gold. It was green.”
The Emerald Parrot, a gem about the size of an ostrich egg, was worshiped by the Inca people. Emeralds were considered living incarnations of the gods. The Incans brought the Emerald Parrot smaller emeralds they referred to as “daughters” as gifts.
When Isabella’s soldiers found the temple and they began an awesome plundering of New World emerald mines. Treasure ships poured into Seville harbor. The Spanish saw the stolen wealth as divine right, and they used it to fight anyone who wasn’t a Spanish Catholic.
Eventually the Spanish became so confident in their ability to restore their coffers, they created a form of currency called the juro. “The juro,” Raden explains, “was the world’s first interest-paying government bond.” It promised a return plus interest for an upfront loan.
It was the Spanish themselves that eventually rendered the emerald worthless by saturating the market with them. But not before modeling the world’s first stock futures.
The Emerald Parrot helped create our modern financial system. But the gem itself was hidden by the Incas before the Spaniards could claim it. It has never been found.
Marie’s necklace
It may be unfair to blame a single necklace for the French Revolution, but it certainly didn’t help the situation. “But just as explosions require catalysts,” writes Raden, “revolutions require a spark to ignite.”
The necklace in question was one commissioned by Louis XV for his mistress, Madame du Barry. Raden describes it as more of a garment than a jewel. It took the jewelers several years to gather 2,800 carats worth of diamonds to complete the elaborate design. By then, the king had died.
His grandson’s wife and new queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was only 19 when the necklace was first offered to her. But she flatly refused to purchase it.
Meanwhile, a young con artist by the name of Jeanne de la Motte convinced a power-hungry cardinal to purchase the necklace from its desperate sellers on behalf of the queen, without the queen’s knowledge. The necklace was purchased with an IOU.
Instead of delivering the necklace to the unsuspecting Antoinette, who was innocently raising her children in the French countryside, de la Motte took it apart and began selling the diamonds one by one.
The trial that followed sent de la Motte to prison, but the public believed gossip that Antoinette was aware of the plot. Along with the lavish parties Antoinette had thrown in her youth as citizens of France starved, it cast the queen as uncaring and vain.
By the time the French Revolution was in full swing, Marie Antoinette was so painfully reviled, a mob of 7,000 women invaded the castle with the sole intention of murdering her. When they found her room “only moments after she’d slipped away,” Raden writes, “they took their pikes and knives . . . and stabbed her bed over and over — just in case she was hiding in the mattress.”
Elizabeth’s pearl
Pearls, formed by an oyster protecting itself from disease, are so pretty, jokes Raden, “that you forget that you’re looking at the remnants of an infection, wrapped around a dead parasite.”
La Peregrina, or “the wanderer,” is arguably the world’s most famous pearl, once purchased by Richard Burton as a Valentine’s Day gift for Elizabeth Taylor. Raden describes it as an enormous, “perfectly pear-shaped natural white pearl.”
But before it lived inside celebrity jewelry boxes, La Peregrina inspired the Spanish to try to take over England.
When King Philip of Spain agreed to marry the virgin queen, Mary of England, in 1554, he gave her La Peregrina.
According to Raden, the pearl itself “sent a message of wealth, power and global dominance.”
The marriage between Philip and Mary was a complicated one. Mary was 11 years older and unable to have children. When she died, Philip immediately proposed marriage to her much younger, famously despised sister, Elizabeth I.
As Raden puts it, “Mary was hot for Philip, Philip wanted Elizabeth, and Elizabeth only had eyes for the family jewels.”
When Elizabeth refused Philip’s hand, he refused her La Peregrina. Elizabeth then turned a blind eye when pirates and privateers pillaged Spain’s ships.
“Elizabeth used pearls to look virginal and holy,” writes Raden. But her obsession was deeper. She had coveted La Peregrina. In retaliation for all the pillaging of his ships, Philip sent the Spanish Armada to take England. Elizabeth’s breathtaking defeat over them ushered in England’s Golden Age.
Maybe next time Philip thought twice before making a woman angry by taking away her favorite jewel.
Mikimoto’s seeds
How did Japan go from an isolationist nation to a World War II power in less than 50 years?
One of Japan’s biggest accomplishments in that period was a charge led by Kokichi Mikimoto, a Japanese noodle maker with dreams of being a scientist. After years and multiple attempts, he finally figured out how to inspire an oyster to produce a perfectly round pearl. The method was relatively simple. The oysters, writes Raden, are actually seeded, “just like corn in the field.”
Mikimoto planted an already-round pearl from one oyster inside another oyster. By 1916, he patented these “cultured” pearls.
It was, writes Raden, “the beginning of the 20th century’s fusion of nature and technology.” Quickly Japan became the world’s sole exporter “of millions of perfect pearls.”
Unlike other gemstones that take millions of years to form, pearls grow in a matter of years. Japan suddenly dominated the pearl industry, with one of the world’s great gemstones patented and grown there exclusively. Their national economy exploded along with the pearl trade, allowing Japan to maintain some of its cultural integrity and a “seat,” as Raden puts it, “at the international table.”