Luxury retailer Louis Vuitton has unveiled its recently acquired 1,758-carat rough diamond, the second-largest ever discovered, to a select audience in Paris, France, before its turns it into a fine jewellery collection.
The 166-year-old fashion house, which announced last week it was the new owner of the Sewelô diamond, meaning “rare find” in Southern Africa’s Setswana language, will now leave it in the hands of Belgium’s HB.
The Antwerp-based diamond manufacturer will cut and polish the blackened, tennis-ball sized stone, found last year by Canada’s Lucara Diamond (TSX:LUC).
While the mining company has not
revealed how much it sold the diamond for, it said it would be cut into smaller
pieces, part of a fine jewellery collection.
According to HB, Louis Vuitton paid
50% up front for the diamond, with Lucara
keeping an interest in the other half. Both player have also agreed to direct 5%
of the proceeds from the retail sales to community-based initiatives in
Botswana.
Before Lucara found Sewelô, the
previous holder of the world’s second-largest diamond was held by the 1,111-carat “Lesedi La Rona”, also dug up by the
Vancouver-based miner, in 2015. The rock sold for $53 million to
luxury jeweler Graff Diamonds in 2017.
The only larger diamond ever
unearthed was the 3,106-carat Cullinan Diamond, discovered in South Africa in
1905. The Cullinan was later cut into smaller stones, some of which now form
part of British royal family’s crown jewels.
What makes Sewelô special,
according to Melissa Smet, director of the Syndicate of the Belgian Diamond
Industry (SBD), is its “mysterious” nature.
“The stone is covered in black carbon, and the quality of the diamond under that layer remains a mystery,” she told The Brussels Times. “There is no guarantee that the diamond will produce precious stones of high quality, which means a great risk.”
Karowe, which began commercial
operations in 2012, yielded last year more than 20 diamonds larger than 100
carats, eight of them exceeding 200 carats.
Lucara, which has focused efforts on the prolific Botswana mine as of late, is close to completing a feasibility study into potential underground production and extension of the mine’s productive life.
Louis Vuitton’s purchase is just
the latest move its parent company, LVMH, has taken into the luxury jewellery
market. The conglomerate also owns Italian jewellery brand Bulgari and
watchmakers TAG Heuer and Hublot, and in November, it acquired the iconic New
York jeweller Tiffany & Co. for more than $16 billion.