Rock Stars

When, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a jewelry-laden Marilyn Monroe sang the immortal words “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” she was apparently decked out in rhinestones. At the movie’s premiere, in 1953, however, Monroe was wearing the legendary Moon of Baroda (as she is in the photo at left), a 24.04-carat canary-yellow Indian diamond discovered in the 15th century. The pear-shaped gem likely spent some time in Antwerp, which has long provided the world’s jewelry houses with major stones.

The city’s history takes center stage in “Diamond Divas,” an exhibition on view at the province of Antwerp’s Diamond Museum through June 8. The show, whose aim is to call attention to the Belgian capital’s gem-selling and -cutting past and present, was organized by the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, a square-mile area that contains four bourses, shops, specialized diamond banks, diamond-grading labs and insurance, security and transport companies devoted to the city’s signature industry.

For about five centuries, Antwerp has been the world’s leading diamond market, home to gem specialists from all over the world who import and export rough and polished stones of every color, shape and quality. Diamond merchants there still handle 80 to 85 percent of the global rough-diamond trade through about 1,500 retail and wholesale companies and exchanges. In 2007 just five streets in the Flemish city had a turnover of more than $42 billion.

Once, Antwerp was also the capital of diamond cutting and polishing, but those professions are becoming more global, and new processing companies in such places as Mumbai and Dubai have eroded the city’s business. India, which allows diamonds to be traded duty-free, imported $1.98 billion worth of the stones in the fiscal year 2007, according to the Times of India. Many of those imports were from Dubai, purchases that contributed to a 53 percent rise in the emirate’s diamond trade, to $11.23 billion, a figure provided by the Dubai Diamond Exchange, which says Dubai is poised to be the next world diamond hub.

About 30 other cities now process diamonds, but Antwerp is still known for the finest workmanship. “Diamond Divas” is filled with examples of beautifully cut stones—loans from private owners, auction houses and such leading jewelers as Cartier and Bulgari, as well as from the Principality of Monaco. Many of the gems were worn by women who influenced fashion and jewelry design, including Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren and Jacqueline Kennedy. Among the treasures are a devant de corsage, left, once possessed by Empress Eugénie of France, as well as the Moon of Baroda, courtesy of its anonymous owner by way of Christie’s, which sold it in 1990 for $297,000.

The exhibition, says its curator, Jennie Baeten, “is about showing the world that we are actually the world diamond center. There’s a lot of competition, but theyare not taking over. In Antwerp you have high quality. We have the tradition and the craftsmanship. No other center can equal that.”

"Rock Stars" originally appeared in the May 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2008 Table of Contents.