Articles
Famous Gems and Beaded Jewelry: The Bahia Emerald
The story of the Bahia Emerald isn’t one of women flaunting dazzling beaded jewelry, but of Las Vegas heists and near blood baths in the desert. It is the largest emerald stone ever found, and the single largest emerald crystal ever discovered in embedded in rock. It weighs 840 pounds. That’s about 1,900,000 carats. It’s worth about $400 million. Chump change, right?
After it was found in Brazil, it exchanged hands several times between gem and beaded jewelry custodians, until it wound up stored in New Orleans—at exactly the wrong time.
Famous Gems and Beaded Jewelry: The Curse of the Amber Room
The Amber Room was an entire room made of amber panels and beaded jewelry. During WWII, it was stolen from Russia by the Germans, who installed it in a Kaliningrad museum. When things began to look bad for the Germans, the director of the museum crated up the Amber Room, with all its accompanying ornaments and beaded jewelry, for safekeeping. The city was bombed soon after, and the Amber Room was never found.