St George's Diamond

Inscribed in black ink: "Ruskin’s “St. George’s” diamond, / real size: W.G.C., 1884 ."

In a letter of 25 February 1884 Ruskin wrote to his friend Charles Eliot Norton: “I’m arranging a case at the British Museum, to show the whole history of silica, and I’m lending them a perfect octahedral crystal of diamond weighing 129 carats, which I mean to call St. George’s diamond, and to head my history of precious stones.” A few days earlier he had told George Baker, later to succeed him as Master of the Guild of St. George, that “I have just paid a thousand [pounds] cash down for a diamond which will be the Guild’s ultimately and called ‘St. George’s diamond’, but at present I keep it in my power. It is to be exhibited on loan at the British Museum, the first they ever put in their gallery on loan.”

Changing his mind in 1887, he presented it to the Natural History Museum, re-naming it the Colenso Diamond “in honour of his friend, the loyal and patiently adamantine First Bishop of Natal.” One of the world’s largest diamonds, sadly it was stolen from the Museum in 1965 and has not been recovered. Happily this watercolour by Ruskin’s secretary W.G. Collingwood exists to give some idea of its size and beauty.