YELLOW DIAMONDS

One of the most popular diamonds on the market today, a beautiful yellow diamond will give a fresh, lustrous appeal to any diamond necklace, ring, earrings or any other piece of fine jewelry. Our extensive selection of yellow loose diamonds here at Alpha Imports offers a vast array of stunning natural yellow diamond options, including exquisite yellow canary diamonds, available in a wide range of shapes, sizes, weights and clarity options.

From the gorgeous 5.4 mm 0.7 ct. round fancy yellow diamond and the rare 0.40 carat princess cut fine yellow fancy diamond with SI2 clarity, to the elegant 4 carat yellow diamond with I4 clarity, we are more than certain you will find just the yellow diamond you have been looking for, at a value that simply can't be beat!

Yellow Fancy diamond. Weight: 0.4 ct. Round SI2 Natural Diamond in size: 4.4 mm

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Star of the South

The Star of the South, also known as Estrela do Sul, is a diamond found in Brazil in 1853. The diamond is cut into a cushion shape and weighs 128.48 carats (25.70 g). The Star of the South is graded as a type IIa diamond, with a colour grading of light pinkish-brown and a clarity of VS2. At the time of discovery, the diamond weighed 254.5 carats (50.9 g). It has passed through the hands of many owners, and its last known purchase was by Cartier store, when it was sold by Rustomjee Jamsetjee of Mumbai. The light reflected by the diamond is white, and the refracted light is of a rose tint. This gives the diamond its light pinkish-brown hue.

The diamond was found by a slave girl in 1853, at the Bagagem Diamond Mines in Brazil. It was handed over to her master, Casimiro de Tal, who rewarded her for finding the diamond by granting her freedom and a pension for life. Casimiro de Tal later sold it for £3,000, a price far lower than its actual value. The buyer deposited the diamond at the Bank of Rio de Janeiro for £30,000.

The uncut diamond was passed through the hands of several buyers, until it was bought by Coster’s Establishment of Amsterdam for £35,000. It was then cut into an oval cushion shape by a cutter called Voorsanger of Coster’s Establishment, at a cost of £500.

It was purchased by Halphen and Associates of Paris, a syndicate of diamond merchants led by Messrs. Halphen, who named it Estrela do Sul, or Star of the South. The syndicate exhibited the diamond 1862 at the London Exhibition, and again 1867 at the Paris Exhibition. On both occasions, the Star of the South received considerable attention. The diamond was later sent to a diamond dealing house in India, where negotiations were carried out to sell it to a Maharajah for a price of £110,000. However, this deal was not successful and the diamond was returned to Halphen and Associates.

During the diamond’s stay in India, Prince Mulhar Rao of the royal family of Gaekwad got to know about the stone. He instructed E. H. Dresden of London to purchase the diamond, who purchased it from Halphen and Associates for £80,000 on behalf of the prince. The Star of the South was in the possession of the Gaekwad family for several years. It was later mounted on a necklace along with the 78.5 carats (15.7 g) English Dresden diamond. In 1934, Prince Mulhar Rao’s son had told Robert M. Shipley, an American gemologist about this. In 1948, the Maharani Sita Devi of Baroda, was photographed wearing the necklace at her husband Maharajah Pratapsinh's birthday party.

The Star of the South was later purchased by Rustomjee Jamsetjee of Mumbai, who sold it to Cartier in 2002.

Florentine Diamond

The Florentine Diamond is a lost diamond of Indian origin. It is light yellow in colour with very slight green overtones. It is cut in the form of an irregular (although very intricate) nine-sided 126-facet double rose cut, with a weight of 137.27 carats (27.454 g). The stone is also known as the Tuscan, the Tuscany Diamond, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Austrian Diamond and the Austrian Yellow Diamond.

The stone's origins are disputed. Reportedly, it has been cut by Lodewyk van Berken for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Charles is said to have been wearing it when he fell in the Battle of Morat on June 22, 1476. A peasant or foot soldier found it on the Duke's person and sold it for a florin, thinking it was glass. The new owner Bartholomew May, a citizen of Berne, sold it to the Genoese, who sold it in turn to Ludovico Sforza. By way of the Fuggers it came into the Medici treasury at Florence. Pope Julius II is also named as one of its owners.

Another version of the stone's early history is that the rough stone was acquired in the late 1500s from the King of Vijayanagar in southern India by the Portuguese Governor of Goa, Ludovico Castro, Count of Montesanto, after the king's defeat by Portuguese troops. The crystal was deposited with the Jesuits in Rome until, after lengthy negotiations, Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany succeeded in buying it from the Castro-Noronha family for 35,000 Portuguese scudi crocati.

Duke Ferdinand's son, Cosimo II, finally entrusted his father's purchase to a cutter, Pompeo Studentoli, a Venetian working in Florence. The finished gem was delivered on October 10, 1615. An inventory drawn up on Cosimo's death confirms the acquisition of the rough diamond by Ferdinand and describes the gem as 'faceted on both sides and encircled by a diamond encrusted band'.

Documented history begins when Jean Baptiste Tavernier, the French jeweller and traveller saw the stone among the possessions of Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1657. It then passed into the hands of the Habsburgs when the last of the Medicis died through the marriage of Francis III Stephan of Lorraine to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and was placed in the Habsburg Crown Jewels in the Hofburg in Vienna. At the time it was valued at $750,000.

After the fall of the Austrian Empire during World War I, the stone was taken by the Imperial Family into exile in Switzerland. The stone was stolen some time after 1918 by a person close to the family and taken to South America with other gems of the Crown Jewels. After this, it was rumoured that the diamond was brought into the United States in the 1920's and was recut and sold.

Noor-ol-Ain Diamond

The Noor-ol-Ain is the principle diamond mounted in a tiara of the same name made for Iranian Empress Farah Pahlavi's wedding to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1958. The Diamond is believed to have been recovered from the Golconda mines in India and was brought into the Iranian Imperial collection after the conquest of that country by Nader Shah Afshar in the 18th century.

It is one of the largest pink diamonds in the world and is believed to have once formed part of an even larger gem. That larger diamond is thought to have been cut in two, with one section becoming the Noor-ol-Ain and the other the Darya-ye Noor diamond. Both of these pieces are currently part of the Iranian Crown Jewels.

Noor-ol-Ain translated from Persian means the light of the eye.

Darya-ye Noor

The Darya-ye Noor "Sea of Light", "River of Light" or "Ocean of Light"; also spelled Darya-i-Noor, Darya-e Noor and Darya-i-Nur is one of the largest diamonds in the world, weighing an estimated 182 carats (36 g). Its colour, pale pink, is one of the rarest to be found in diamonds. The Darya-ye Noor presently forms part of the Iranian Crown Jewels and is on display at the Central Bank of Iran in Tehran.

This diamond, like the Kohinoor, was mined at the Golconda mines, more specifically Paritala-Kollur Mine in Andhra Pradesh, India[2]. It found its way into the possession of the mughal emperors.

In 1739, Nader Shah of Iran invaded India and sacked Delhi; the plunder he garnered from the Mughal treasury included the Darya-i-noor, in addition to the Kohinoor and the Peacock throne. All of these treasures were carried to Iran by Nader Shah and the Darya-i-noor has remained there ever since.

After Nader Shah's death, the Darya-ye Noor was inherited by his grandson, Shahrokh Mirza. It then passed into the possession of Alam Khan Khozeimeh, and later, of Lotf Ali Khan Zand, a member of Iran's Zand dynasty. Agha Mohammad Khan, founder of Qajar dynasty, defeated the Zands, and thus the Darya-e-noor came into the possession of the Qajars. Fath Ali Shah Qajar had his name inscribed on one facet of the diamond. Later, Nasser-al-Din Shah Qajar often wore it on an armband. He apparently believed that this diamond had been one adorning the crown of Cyrus . When armbands fell from royal fashion, he wore the diamond as a brooch. On occasion, the gem would be left in the care of high personages of the land, as a sign of honor. It was eventually kept hidden in the Golestan Palace treasury museum until Mozzafar-al-Din Shah Qajar's time -- this monarch wore it as a hat decoration while visiting Europe in 1902. Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, wore the diamond as a decoration on his military hat during his coronation in 1926, and it was used in Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's coronation ceremony in 1967.


Possible association
In 1965, a Canadian team conducting research on the Iranian Crown Jewels concluded that the Darya-e-Noor may well have been part of a large pink diamond that had been studded in the throne of the mughal emperor Shah Jahan, and had been described in the journal of the French jeweller Tavernier in 1642, who called it the "Diamanta Grande Table". This diamond may have been cut into two pieces; the larger part is the Darya-e-noor ("Sea of Light"); the smaller part is believed to be the 60 carats (12 g) Noor-ol-Ein diamond, presently studded in a tiara also in Iranian Imperial collection.