Harry Winston honours its founder with the Legacy high jewellery collection, highlighting an array of flawless diamonds.
For all his fame, Harry Winston was a man of mystery. Despite having never been photographed for insurance and security reasons, he gained such international acclaim that the Duchess of Windsor requested an audience with him in 1948, stating that she had heard he had “wonderful things”, referring to the exquisite diamonds, sapphires and emeralds he collected.
Through his hands had passed some of the world’s most beautiful stones, including the mythical Hope blue diamond that he would later donate to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the 94.80-carat Star of the East, the 41-carat Dresden green diamond, the 726-carat Jonker, the 69.42-carat TaylorBurton diamond, among others.
Today, this fascination for diamonds continues unabated at the House of Harry Winstonas it follows in its founder’s footsteps by purchasing spectacular stones under its new owners, the Swatch Group. In 2013, it acquired the Winston Legacy, a 101.73-carat pearshaped, D colour, flawless diamond for US$26.7m, and a year later, Winston Blue, a 13.22-carat vivid blue, flawless diamond for US$23.8m.
On the occasion of the purchase of the Legacy, Harry Winston CEO Nayla Hayek said, “The acquisition of the Winston Legacy underscores the brand’s commitment to perfection and quality at the highest level. A stone of this calibre and rarity is the perfect continuation of Mr Winston’s legacy as the King of Diamonds.”
Underlining this clear direction is the brand’s latest high jewellery collection, Legacy, which is inspired by the pearshaped diamond of the same name. Within this 22-piece collection is an array of important diamonds that are each internally flawless and D colour. Sixty per cent of the stones in the collection are of Type IIa quality—only 1 to 2 per cent of the world’s output of natural diamonds fall in this category, and are characterised by a lack of nitrogen impurities, meaning that the stones shine with limpid brilliance.
The team of gemmologists at Harry Winston took three years to source for the stones—their task was to find pear- and marquise-shaped diamonds that fulfilled the criteria of quality and weightage. Once the diamonds were sourced, the design team produced sketches that would highlight each stone as the centrepiece. The ethos of using design to service the stone is directly derived from founder Harry Winston himself, who would famously say, “Buy the stone, never the mounts.”
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Still, it was only once we were able to tear our eyes away from the facetted scintillation of the centre diamond that we truly discovered the overall concept of each piece, further appreciating the virtuosity of the design team and the handcrafting skills of the artisans.