Famous Green Diamonds
Green coloured diamonds are one of the rarest colours of all coloured diamonds. In fact there is only one famous green diamond that we know of. The Dresden Green diamond is a 41 carat (8.2 g) natural green diamond that has a historical record dating to 1722, when a London news-sheet carried an article about it in its 25 October-27th edition.
The diamond is named after the capital of Saxony, Germany where it has been on display for most of the last two centuries. It had a brief spell in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, USA in 2000, where it was displayed in the same room as the Hope diamond.
The stone's unique green color is due to natural exposure to radioactive materials (see our page on Hues for more info relating to colours of green diamonds). The stone is being used to compare natural versus lab-produced green diamonds — it is hoped that it can be used to devise a test to differentiate between naturally green diamonds, which are quite rare, and lab-produced ones.