Tiffany acquires 71 carat fancy vivid yellow diamond

AMERICAN jeweller Tiffany & Co has announced the acquisition of a fancy vivid yellow diamond of over 71 carats, with the rough being the largest of its kind ever discovered in Canada.

The stone has been fashioned into two yellow emerald-cut diamonds of over 15 and 20 carats each. They will be presented as loose stones to select clients, with the eventual purchaser or purchasers invited to work with Nathalie Verdeille, Tiffany’s chief artistic officer, to create customised jewellery designs.

Victoria Wirth Reynolds, the jeweller’s chief gemologist, has said the acquisition “represents Tiffany’s heritage of acquiring the most coveted gems on earth”.

“Impressive for its colour and size, our artisans handcrafted this rough stone into two gems of unparalleled vivid yellow colour and brilliance,” she says.

Tiffany says the rough gem was sustainably sourced from the Ekati Mine in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The stone, which showcased a near-perfect octahedral shape, is considered extremely rare due to its highly saturated vivid yellow hue.

The jeweller’s latest acquisition comes on the heels of other high-profile purchases this year. In July, it announced it bought a 10 carat emerald from the historic Muzo mine 97 km north-west of Bogota in Colombia. Shaped into a rectangular square cut, it was named the Tiffany Muzo Emerald. The stone is unique due to its exceptionally high clarity, superior transparency and saturated green colour, for which Muzo emeralds are famous. It also has no fissures and is virtually inclusion free.

At the start of the year, Tiffany also announced it purchased the final lot of 35 rare pink diamonds from the now-closed Argyle Diamond Mine in Australia. Located in a remote area of Western Australia, the renowned mine was open from 1983 until November 2020, and was virtually the only source of pink diamonds in the world.

Since France’s LVMH conglomerate acquired Tiffany for US$16 billion more than two years ago, the jeweller has focused on the high jewellery segment, a niche category that is the playing field of the world’s top luxury brands.

To support Tiffany’s ambitions, LVMH in April announced its purchase of two French producers of high and fine jewellery, Orest and Abysse. Anthony Ledru, Tiffany’s president and chief executive officer, said the acquisition will expand the jeweller’s production capacity “to meet the growing demand” of its customers.

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All this came as the jeweller reopened its iconic store at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the same month. The extensive four-year restoration of the store that first opened in 1940 is believed to have cost a whopping US$500 million. The building was immortalised in movies such as Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961), starring the late Audrey Hepburn.