The Hope Diamond, perhaps the most famous diamond in the world, had a counterpart in the collection it was nestled in — the Hope Spinel.
Both belonging at one time to powerful London banker Henry Philip Hope, who died in 1839, the 45.52-carat Hope Diamond now resides in the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian, while the 50.13-carat spinel is headlining Bonhams’ Fine Jewelry sale in London on September 24.
Notably, the spinel, the size and color of a small plum, has not been offered for sale for nearly a century.
While it sold for £1,060 — or the equivalent of £80,000 in today’s money — in 1917, Bonhams is expecting it to fetch between £150,000 and £200,000 this year.
But “it could go for a lot more,” says Emily Barber, UK Jewelry Department Director at Bonhams. “You just don’t see pieces of this quality and provenance on the open market very often. It’s very exciting.”
Indeed, the provenance of the stone, in addition to its superb quality, should generate more collector interest than usual.
Hope, who descended from a dynasty of wealthy merchant bankers in Amsterdam, moved to London with his elder brother at the end of the 18th century, and built very valuable art and jewelry collections. Because he never married, he secretly gifted his 700-piece collection — which included this Hope Spinel and the Hope Diamond — to one of his three nephews to avoid death duties.
Instead, the other two nephews fought him bitterly over 10 years for the inheritance, leading the court to order that the Hope Spinel and several other of the most valuable gems be separated from the collection to resolve the issue.
“Eventually it was decided that the younger nephew Alexander Beresford-Hope would inherit the bulk of the collection. But his elder brother, Henry Thomas Hope, would retain eight of the most valuable stones, including the Hope Blue Diamond and the Hope Spinel,” says Barber.
That wasn’t the end of it.
When Henry Thomas died, his widow Anne Adele inherited the jewels. But because their only daughter was married to a profligate and notorious gambler, the 6th Duke of Newcastle, Anne Adele bequeathed them to her second grandson, Henry Francis Pelham-Clinton, on condition that he add the name of "Hope" to his own surnames when he reached the age of legal majority. As Lord Francis Hope, this grandson received his legacy in 1887. However, he had only a life interest in his inheritance, meaning that he could not sell any part of it without court permission.
Unfortunately, Lord Hope too was hope-less gambler, and by the mid 1890s — only nine years after receiving his colossal inheritance — he was declared bankrupt.
With court permission, he privately sold the Hope Diamond to a dealer in 1901. In 1917, whatever remained of the Hope collections was dispersed at Christie’s in the sale of ‘The Hope Heirlooms.’
The Hope spinel, lot 35 in the sale, went to a dealer, who later sold it to Lady Mount Stephen, who was reportedly a close friend of Queen Mary.
“The Mount Stephens were very well connected to the British royal family, and gifted a diamond necklace to Queen Mary that Princess Margaret eventually wore on her wedding day,” says Barber. “When Lady Mount Stephen died in 1933, the spinel went to her niece-by-marriage, Elsie Reford, who along with her husband, amassed one of the most important collections of art in Canada. The spinel was gifted to Elsie Refords’ granddaughter, who was also Lady Mount Stephen’s goddaughter. The current owner is a direct descendant who has always known it as being ‘Aunt Gian’s (Lady Mount Stephen) Hope Spinel’.”
Assessed by Swiss gemology laboratory SSEF, the exceptionally transparent spinel is confirmed to have come from the ancient Kuh-i-Lal mines in Tajikistan, where other very large historical gems in the Crown Jewels were also found.
“The mines are geographically difficult to get to and politically in the 20th century weren’t being used. That makes spinels like these exceptionally rare,” says Barber. “The Hope Spinel is a fabulous story; it’s always exciting to re-discover something that has been lost.”
