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Scott Sucher
I first started stone cutting when I was 14 years old (several
decades ago!). At that time, I was creating cabochons, and primarily
working opal. This continued through college. When my classmates were
watching “Charlie’s Angels,” I was cutting, and a 26 carat opal paid
for my Maui honeymoon.
During my junior year in college, I had found a gentleman by the
name of Dave Cavolo in Phoenix who was just a few years older than me.
He had his own shop, earning a living faceting stones and making
jewelry. It took me almost a year to convince him to teach me faceting,
but he finally relented. Once my classes were over, I ended up trading
an opal necklace I had created in exchange for an old Ultra-Tec machine
he had laying around, and I was off on my own faceting. |
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I entered Air Force pilot training shortly thereafter, and with my
bride and new-found wealth ($12,000 a year), I decided to start faceting
replicas of famous diamonds out of cubic zirconia (CZ). The groundwork
for this inspiration came from the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Arts in
Elmhurst, Illinois (www.lizzadromuseum.org).
This museum was a 20 minute drive from where I grew up, and I was a
regular visitor ogling their display of quartz diamond replicas. Two
decades later, I had the equipment, money, and ability to fabricate my
own. Little did I know I would have the opportunity to display my
work in their museum!
Information about famous diamonds in 1980 was scanty and difficult
to come by. There was a series of articles written in the Lapidary
Journal
(www.lapidaryjournal.com)
on how to cut famous diamonds, and I
initially used these as reference materials. Unfortunately, I had cut 8
or 9 replicas before I realized that the information given was not
entirely accurate. I decided right then that it was time for me to
perform my own research.
Due to my previous experience using bad
data, I decided to go to the original sources for my information. For my
Hope replica, I called the Smithsonian Institution (www.si.edu) and talked to the curator who obligingly provided me with the
information I needed. Information for the Florentine diamond replica
came from an original manuscript written by Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a
traveling jeweler and merchant who wrote about the stone in the
mid-1600’s. I was fortunate that one of seven original copies of his
book in the United States was in a library only an hour's drive away. My
subsequent replicas were much better, and by 1983, I had a collection of
16 CZ replicas.
For the next 20 years, I didn't add anything to the collection
because the Air Force was sending me to over 30 countries, I was
spending a lot of time traveling for extended periods, and what time I
had at home was spent with family. The interest was still there,
however, and I continued to casually research readily-available data, as
well as to offer workshops and write a short instructional guide,
Shopper's Guide to Gems, for
people who wanted to know more about gems (how to buy them, how to
assess quality, etc.). During this very busy time in my life, there
remained at least half dozen stones that I still wanted to create, but I
didn’t have the time to devote to their primary research and creation.
This all changed after I retired from the Air Force. I started
writing a series of articles for the Lapidary Journal on creating
famous diamonds and had given talks to various organizations in several
states. My articles and presentations were then posted and referenced on
the Internet.
In December 2003, I received a phone call out of the blue from a
producer for the Discovery Channel. He wanted to create a show dealing
with famous diamonds, and had researched the various topics on the
Internet. My research and work was cited fairly extensively
by
then
on the Internet, and he saw that my name kept popping up on various
Web sites (You can Google Scott Sucher famous diamonds to
duplicate his search process). After a five-day search, the producer was
finally able to locate me.
Over the next 2-3 weeks, his idea gradually morphed to where he
wanted to create a show using forensics as much as possible to determine
the genealogy of the Hope diamond. I said that to do that, he would have
to coordinate with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. to
have the stone removed from its setting so I could take pictures to
model the stone. He said “No problem,” and hung up. I thought to myself,
"Well, here's a project about to die a quick, natural death; surely my
reputation isn't that good!" But a week or so later, he called back and
said “OK, they’ll unset the Hope for you.” (It took several minutes for
me to breathe again!)
Now that there was Smithsonian buy-in, I knew that I alone didn’t
have all the necessary knowledge to do everything required for the
program. This was an extremely important project, with people world-wide
that would find our results very interesting, and it needed to be done
with rigorous scientific methods via a team approach. I contacted a friend of mine, Steve Attaway, an engineer with Sandia
National Laboratories and an expert in computer modeling. His wife,
Nancy, is an outstanding faceter, internationally recognized for her
work (www.attawaygems.com). Both Steve and Nancy are very active in the
faceting community through such organizations such as the
New Mexico Faceter's Guild.
I knew that our combined experience and capability would enable us to do
the job.
Filming started in February of 2004 and gave me the opportunity to
hold and study the unset Hope diamond over a four hour period. Steve
used the photos I took of the unset Hope and analyzed them using at
least three computer programs to build a CAD model of the Hope. There
were several more photo shoots throughout the year as the program took
shape, and Steve and Nancy were also able to handle the Hope in December
of that year. Our findings were documented in the Discovery Channel
program “Unsolved History: The Hope Diamond” that first aired in
February 2005, and also were circulated in news reports all over the
world.
My association with the Discovery Channel and Smithsonian opened up
many opportunities for me to perform more in-depth research on other
famous diamonds. Asscher Diamonds in Amsterdam
(www.asscher.nl) was instrumental in assisting me with research
on the Cullinan diamonds, as were individuals at the Tower of London and
Royal Collections (www.royal.gov.uk),
and the Crown Jeweler for the British Crown Jewels. Coster Diamonds of
Amsterdam (www.costerdiamonds.com) sent me one of their two glass models created in 1851 of the Koh-I-Noor
diamond before it was recut. The Natural History Museum in London
(www.nhm.ac.uk) loaned me
one of their two plaster models also created in 1851 of the same stone,
and research on this still continues as of October 2006. The Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto (www.rom.on.ca)
provided
much-needed assistance in my research on the Great Table, Darya-I-Nur,
and Nur-al-Ain diamonds.
No source
has been neglected in my quest for historical accuracy, and my efforts
and findings are made possible only through the assistance and
cooperation of these many fine museums,
organizations, and individuals.
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