The Queen of Kalahari

Part 6.- You are going to read an article about a famous diamond bought by a jewellery company. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits each gap (37-42). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.

 

The Queen of Kalahari

Sara Royce-Greensill tells the story of a famous diamond.

Among the many photographs on the walls of the Swiss headquarters of the jewellery company Chopard, one stands out an image of a 342-carat rough diamond. The stone was discovered in Botwana’s Karowe Mine two years ago. Of all the many colossal roughs discovered at Karowe, Chopard’s co-president Caroline Scheufele believes hers is the purest. ‘I was really lucky to put my his on this one. It’s no the biggest but the others don’t have the same purity,’ she says.

Scheufele first saw the stone in Botswana in September 2015. ‘Our partner at the mine called me and said, “We’ve found something you should not let pass,”’ she recalls, handling an exact replica of the rough, made from crystal. 37.-______ Indeed it’s falt along one side which, she says, hints that it was once twice as large, and a similarly sized sibling (the King of Kalahari) may still be found.

 

‘It was an emotional moment when I opened the package,’ she says a moment that is recreated in a dramatic 50-minute documentary film charting the discovery of the stone. 38.-_____ There were various possibilities. ‘We could have cut big 80-carat stones from it and maybe made a pair of drop earrings,’ Scheufele muses. ‘Somebody else would have done that, but Chopard is all abour creativity. I didn’t just want one piece, I wanted a whole set.’

 

After naming her newly acquired stone the Queen of Kalahari, she started figuring out the best possible combination of stones that would work commercially. 39.-_____ After a nerve-racking few months with expert polishers in Belgium, Scheufele had all the ingredients for ‘the most prestigious se of jewllerey ever to emerge from Chopard’s High Jewellery workshop’ – a six-piiece set entitled the Gardens of Kalahari.

 

40.-____ Two rings, a necklace, a bracelet, a pair of earrings and a secret watch all shine a brilliante pure white. Among the 23 stones cut from the Queen of Kalahari, five are above 20 carats. Each represents a different flower. While the dry Kalahari desert may never see such species in bloom, the botanical theme reflects Scheufele’s passion for gardening and the fact that ‘nature gave us this stone’,

 

The collection’s versatility is remarkable. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a whole set that you can play with, detach, wear in different ways for different occasions,,’ Scheufele says. ‘If I’m not mistaken there are 17 different possibilities.’ 41.-_____

 

I can barely begin to comprehend the painstaking work involved in shaping that beautiful rough into these exquisite jewels. In total, it took over 3,200 hours to create the Gardens of Kalahari. 42.-_____ This varied from melting the gold, through sketching the pieces, to settng and polishing each diamond. It is a remarkable achievement.

 

A) She used computer modelling to assist her, which indicated it was possible to cut 23 diamonds of various shapes and sizes, all of them in the highest grade of clarity.

B) When worn in this way, it makes a definite statement.

C) Almost every pair of hands in Chopard’s workshop touched the product at the same point.

D) There was no doubt about whether she’d buy the stone – the only question was, what to do with it once it was in her possession.

E) For example, the necklace can be worn as a simple choker built up with further rows of petal-shaped diamonds, or adorned with a detachable flower, and one, two or three pendants.

F) About the size of a tennis ball, it fills the palm of the hand, with a mixture of jagged edges and cool smooth planes.

G) Although I had seen sketches of each individual piece, nothing quite prepared me for the impact of the jewels, presented in a velvet-lined case.