Christie’s to Auction Ponahalo Diamonds in October

Fine arts auction house Christie’s said on Wednesday it was gearing up for its New York Sale auction in October in which it plans to sell the two big Ponahalo diamonds it owns.

The Christie auction will offer an array of white and colored diamonds and gems and a collection of signed jewels called the Superb 20^th Century Jewels from an American Collection.

The Ponahalo diamonds weigh about 102.11 and 70.87 carats and were cut from a rough diamond of 316.15 carats that was found in De Beers’ Venetia mine. The two sales comprise of 273 lots and expect to realize in excess of $35 million.

The name “Ponahalo” was keyed by Jonathan Oppenheimer, head of the chairman’s office at De Beers Group, and means “vision” in Sotho, the tribal language spoken by the Venda tribe in the area of South Africa where the gem was mined.

The Steinmetz Diamond Group, a leading diamond manufacturer, cut the original rough diamond into four polished diamonds. It took the trading group 18 months to shape the largest two diamonds on sale into rectangular-cut gems.

A portion of the proceeds of the sale of the Ponahalo diamonds will be donated to the Diamond Empowerment Fund, which is a non-profit organization that funds education programs in African countries where diamonds are mined.