THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY3, 2020 45
carry its prehistoric past with it, in a
way that clearer diamonds do not. It
was a reminder that the Sewelô was
created before the planet’s atmosphere
contained oxygen, when the only life-
forms were single-celled organisms. In
one sense, I realized, diamonds are bau-
bles—somewhat vulgar totems of
wealth. In another sense, they are ves-
sels of deep time unlike anything else
that can be found near the surface of
the earth.
Mansori is a businessman, but he
shared some of this sense of wonder.
He told me that he was loath to do any-
thing to the Sewelô except look at it.
Rough was its pristine state. He won-
dered whether it might be best for the
diamond to sit in a museum vitrine, un-
polished. Of course, that would be un-
tenable: Lucara has shareholders. In-
vestors like to realize the value of their
assets. Some weeks later, I discovered
that, at the very moment I was holding
the stone, Mansori and Thomas were
engineering a bold plan for the Sewelô.
E
arlier this month, Lucara and an
entity co-founded by Mansori, HB
Company, signed a deal with the lux-
ury-goods giant Louis Vuitton. The
Sewelô is now owned jointly: Lucara
has a fifty-per-cent stake, the others
twenty-five per cent each. None of the
parties would confirm exactly what
value had been placed on the Sewelô,
but one knowledgeable person told me
that the price was in the “low millions”
of dollars, in part because of the un-
certainties about the diamond’s inte-
rior. Louis Vuitton will sell the pol-
ished gems manufactured from the
stone, but, before the Sewelô is cut, it
will tour the world, in order to educate
people about the geological history of
diamonds. Thomas also stipulated that
five per cent of Louis Vuitton’s net rev-
enue from the Sewelô be channelled
into corporate social-responsibility proj-
ects that Lucara runs in Botswana,
specifically the funding of a large and
well-appointed school that the com-
pany is building near Karowe.
The deal is unprecedented. Louis
Vuitton’s parent company recently
bought Tiffany, but the fashion house
has never itself been a serious diamond
retailer. Becoming a partner in the
Sewelô is designed, in part, to insure
that its entrance into the diamond
sphere will be noticed. (Louis Vuitton
hosted a lavish “launch party” for the
Sewelô on January 21st, during Paris
Fashion Week.) Lucara and HB, for
their part, hope to plunder Louis Vuit-
ton’s exclusive list of rich clients. This
is the first time that all three parts of
the diamond supply chain—miner,
manufacturer, and retailer—have agreed
to work on a stone together. No other
luxury-goods firms were approached;
Thomas made the connection with
Louis Vuitton’s chief executive, Mi-
chael Burke, over lunch in Florida.
There was so much secrecy surround-
ing the deal that Lucara’s leadership
team did not even use the name Louis
Vuitton during their internal discus-
sions. Their potential partner was
known, instead, as Crocodile.
There was jeopardy in the arrange-
ment, for all parties. Mansori had an-
alyzed the rough diamond using a num-
ber of scanners, including an adapted
medical machine that normally mea-
sures bone density. By December, he
still had only a general idea of what
lay beneath the Sewelô’s black rind.
Mansori believed that there might be
as many as two hundred and fifty car-
ats of white, gem-quality diamond
within the Sewelô, but he couldn’t be
sure until he polished windows and in-
spected the interior.
“There will be surprises,” Mansori
told me. His partner in HB, an Israeli
named Shai de-Toledo, said, “This is
the most speculative stone in history.”
With this deal, Lucara was once
again provoking the traditional dia-
mond business—it was bypassing Ant-
werp’s brokers. Eira Thomas made no
apologies. “There is just no way we’re
going to continue to transact diamonds
the way we do today,” she told me. “My
view is that the whole industry is going
to go this direction.” Disruption seems
to be the point of the Sewelô deal. Man-
sori told me recently that he welcomed
any brickbats. The deal, he said, “will
irritate each and every player in this in-
dustry—it takes the playing field and
turns it upside down.”
Whatever is within the stone, Lu-
cara and HB believe that they have
reëngineered the market, at least for
big diamonds. In the past, manufactur-
ers have analyzed rough diamonds, cre-
ated the best possible polished gems
from them, and then attempted to find
customers for those jewels. With this
new arrangement, that equation was
reversed. Wealthy customers will now
be able to commission Louis Vuitton
to carve a diamond, perhaps of their
own design, from the Sewelô. Man-
sori’s mind raced with possibilities.
Maybe they would make three iden-
tical jewels for a billionaire’s triplet
daughters? Or, perhaps, a horse’s-head
diamond for the billionaire owner of a
racing stable? Then again, if the client
did not demand perfect color and clarity,
HB could fashion the world’s largest
polished diamond out of the Sewelô—a
jewel of a thousand carats.
I
n September in Antwerp, Mansori
sat in his office and watched as his
three guests beheld the Sewelô. From
the moment the stone came out of the
safe, it spent barely thirty seconds out
of someone’s grip. We left thumbprints
on the diamond’s planes. Mansori,
laughing, said, “You see? It will not be
put down.”
John Armstrong, the Lucara geol-
ogist, became somewhat giddy when
he held the diamond. “It has heft,” he
said. “Life. ”
Finally, Mansori took the Sewelô
in his bony hands, and rotated it this
way and that. Since receiving the dia-
mond, in the early summer of 2019, he
had spent a considerable part of every
working day staring at it. Despite his
familiarity with the stone, he still
seemed fascinated by its complexity.
He pointed to where the black rind
was thickest, where it abutted more
translucent material.
“You feel nature is playing hide-and-
seek with you,” Mansori said. He then
turned away, for a more private inspection.
“There’s great importance here,” he
said, to nobody in particular. “Not
value. But storytelling. Is there a reg-
ular white stone inside? I don’t know.
I don’t think so. There might be signifi-
cant white pieces inside. Significant.
But value is secondary. You need to
tell the story right.”
Mansori then became a little lost.
He pulled out his iPhone, shone its
flashlight into the diamond, and said,
“There are moments when you can see
right through.”
