London—After more than a year of detailed analysis, cutting and polishing by a team of experts, Graff Diamonds has begun unveiling the diamonds cleaved from the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona.
Mining company Lucara recovered the Type IIa diamond, which weighed 1,111 carats before cleaning, at its Karowe mine in Botswana in November 2015.
It was huge diamond mining news, as the stone that would later be dubbed “Lesedi La Rona,” or “Our Light” in Setswana, was the second largest rough diamond ever found. It is topped only by the 3,106-carat Cullinan unearthed in South Africa in January 1905.
Lesedi La Rona went up for auction at Sotheby’s London in June 2016, where it was expected to go for more than $70 million but did not sell.