Winston Fancy Color Diamonds Make Their Public Debut

Visit the Harry Winston Gallery at the National Museum of Natural History to see some of the rarest diamonds in the world.

Harry Winston gave the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian in 1958, and 67 years later, Harry’s son Ron donated an equally exquisite collection of his own: 119 Fancy color diamonds, a portion of which are making their debut today at the National Museum of Natural History.

Selections from the Winston Fancy Color Diamond Collection that span the rainbow of colors in which diamonds occur. Photos by Robert Weldon, arranged by Gabriela Farfan, courtesy of Ronald Winston.

Ronald Winston collected his Fancy color diamond collection over 60 years, and approximately 40 of these diamonds are now on display in Harry Winston Gallery. The centerpiece of this collection, a two and a third carat Fancy red diamond, is the fifth largest of its kind in the world.

A pure crimson red, the Winston Red Diamond stands out among the collection due to its size and the purity of its color: the “Fancy red” color grade, issued by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), means the diamond is pure red. In other words, its color is not adulted by other hues. Only one in every 25 million diamonds is Fancy red.

As far as we know, this Fancy red diamond is the only one that is on public display anywhere in the world.

“Since I can remember, I have always been a lover of colored diamonds and have collected them throughout my life,” Winston shared with the Smithsonian. “This donation to the Museum represents my life’s achievements in this domain, and I am so happy to share the collection with the Smithsonian Institution and the visitors to the museum. The red diamond is the highlight of my career.”

The History of the Winston Red Diamond

The Winston Red is cut in the old mine brilliant cut, which went out of fashion in the late 19^th century, indicating that the diamond was mined before then. Its recorded history traces back to Jaques Cartier, who sold the diamond to the Maharaja of Nawanagar, a princely state on the western shore of modern-day India. Cartier hoped the Maharaja, Digvijaysinhji would set the diamond in the Ceremonial Necklace of Nawanagar, which Catier assembled with over 600 carats of diamonds.

The Winston Red Diamond, an exquisite 2.33 carat Fancy red diamond – one of the finest in the world. Photo by Robert Weldon, courtesy of Ronald Winston.

Over time, the necklace was disassembled, and in 1988, Ronald Winston acquired the diamond from Digvijaysinhji’s son. A few months later, the Winston Red Diamond made its public debut on the pinky of actress and model Brooke Shields to celebrate the anniversary of the opening of the Harry Winston salon in Tokyo. The necklace, in the meantime, served as the inspiration for the Toussaint Necklace, which was worn by actress Anne Hathaway in Oceans 8.

A scientific analysis of the diamond, performed by world-class diamond experts invited by the National Museum of Natural History, points to an even longer history for the diamond. Data suggests the diamond originated during the Proterozoic era (five hundred million to two and half billion years ago) in Venezuela or Brazil. Still, the exact origin of the diamond will never be known.

The rest of the collection spans the colors of the rainbow and includes white, grey, and black.

How did these diamonds get their color?

Zoom in on the molecules that make up a diamond and you’ll see a structured, orderly network of carbon atoms. A perfect carbon structure, with ever part of the network intact, will yield a colorless diamond.

Color appears in diamonds when some natural process disturbs this carbon network. For example, when some of the carbon atoms in a diamond get switched out for nitrogen, the diamond turns out yellow. Yellow is the most common fancy color in diamonds. Meanwhile, when carbon gets substituted with boron, the diamond turns out blue. Boron is what gives the Hope Diamond its characteristic fancy dark grayish-blue color. Natural radiation in the ground sometimes causes carbon atoms to go missing, and this yields brown and green diamonds. The rarest of all fancy colors are pink and red. These colors are caused by defects in the structure of the diamond itself: Eons ago, extreme temperatures and pressures squeezed these diamonds, which led to small deformations in their crystal structures. The Winston Red diamond likely formed this way.

40 colorful diamonds ranging in size from 0.4 to 9.49 carats will be displayed at the National Museum of Natural History beside the Winston Red Diamond. Photos by Robert Weldon, arranged by Gabriela Farfan, courtesy of Ronald Winston.

A 4.11 carat, emerald cut yellow diamond from the Winston Fancy Color Diamond Collection. Photo by Robert Weldon, courtesy of Ronald Winston.

A selection of five Fancy pink diamonds, exhibiting one of the rarest natural diamond colorations. Photos by Robert Weldon, arranged by Gabriela Farfan, courtesy of Ronald Winston.

All of the fancy diamonds in this new collection feature inclusions, which is common in Fancy color diamonds due to the intense circumstances that led to their formation. Despite this, the intense colors shine through, which is where these unique diamonds make their mark.

Visit the Winston Red Diamond, along with 39 other Fancy color diamonds, at the Harry Winston Gallery at the National Museum of Natural History.