Podcast: Handling the Hope Diamond
Rapaport / JANUARY 23, 2024 | JOSHUA FREEDMAN
From clays and mud to the Hope Diamond
An interview with AGA 2023 Bonanno Award Recipient, Dr. Jeffrey Post, former curator of the Nation’s Smithsonian Institution Natural History Museum’s Gems & Minerals Hall
During his 30 plus years as curator, Dr. Jeffrey Post has brought to the nation and to the world some of the most important gems to be on exhibit to the public, some for the very first time, and for gemological and mineralogical research.
Not only did Dr. Post increase the collection, but he oversaw the reconstruction of the gem and mineral hall itself. He has held several important exhibitions with amazing gems, such as La Peregrina, the Dresden Green, the Wittelsbach, the Steinmetz Pink, the Winston Pumpkin, and donations like the Dom Pedro, the Lion of Merilani, and the list goes on and on….
Dr. Post helped with important research on these gems, so that they weren’t simply gems to ogle at, but provided published gemological science to use for future studies.
Not to mention two very important Hope Diamond studies … one using sophisticated mapping techniques to prove once and for all that the Hope Diamond is the recut French Blue. And that the two largest deep blue diamonds in the world, the Hope and the Wittelsbach, while extremely similar, were never part of the same crystal.
Here is Rapaport’s Joshua Freedman interviewing Dr. Jeffrey Post.
