The Orloff Diamond

According to the legend, the Orloff Diamond, at one time the third largest reduce diamond in the entire world, was set in the eye of the Hindu god Sri-Ranga in a temple in Srirangem, in southern India.

(A lot of diamonds share this same past, it seems that at a single time or yet another nearly all the famous diamonds in the world were as soon as in a statue!)

The Orloff is an antique rose cut diamond (flat bottom, and faceted domed leading), weighing about 194 carats, about the dimension of 50 % an egg. It has by no means been weighed, though once in the course of cleaning in the early twentieth century it fell out of it's mounting. The jeweller executing the cleansing weighed it just before placing it back into it's mounting. Sadly, he in no way wrote down the weight. It is a pure color, with a slightly blue-greenish tint. It measures about 32mm by 35mm by 31mm.

Accoring to the tale, the diamond was stolen from the temple by a French soldier, who had deserted from Dupleix's army soon after fighting in the Carnatic Wars. The soldier fled to Madras and offered the stone to a sea captain for £2,000.

The captain, in flip, is explained to have sold it in London for £12,000 to a Persian merchant named Khojeh Raphael. Raphael then took it to Amsterdam. For this purpose it is at times referred to as the "Amsterdam Diamond".

In 1775 the Russian nobleman, Count Gregory Orlov, purchased the big egg-shaped gem for a huge sum of funds and presented it to Empress Catherine, in an attempt to regain his location as her favourite.

The prince was out of favour because of his bad managing of the Ottoman-Rusian crisis. He supplied her the diamond on St. Catherine's Day in 1776, rather of the standard present of a bouquet of flowers. She accepted the diamond but, unfortunately fro the Count, refused to reinstate Orloff to his previous powerful position in the Court.

Catherine by no means wore the Orloff. Instead, she had it mounted in the leading of the Imperial Scepter, where it remains to this day, on show in the Kremlin Museum.

Count Orloff because rising despondant at his drop from grace, and eventually he went mad. He died in an asylum in 1783.