The Star of India
Formed about two billion years ago; cut before 1900
In the Hall of Gems a milky blue stone the size of a golf ball sits under a single light, and across its rounded surface a six pointed star floats and slides as you move. This is the Star of India, at five hundred and sixty three carats the largest gem quality star sapphire in the world, and probably the most famous. It was found in the gem gravels of Sri Lanka, though nobody recorded when, and its name reflects the vague geography of the nineteenth century jewel trade rather than its true origin.
The star is an optical effect called asterism. Inside the sapphire are countless needles of the mineral rutile, aligned in three directions along the crystal structure of the stone. When the sapphire is cut as a smooth dome rather than in facets, light reflected from those needles gathers into three bright lines that cross at the top. What makes the Star of India unusual is that the star is visible from both sides of the stone, because it was cut as a full oval rather than with a flat back. The blue is soft and slightly greyish, typical of Sri Lankan stones, and the surface has the faint silkiness that rutile gives.
The financier J. P. Morgan bought the sapphire from the gem dealer George Kunz of Tiffany and gave it to the museum in 1900. In 1964 it was stolen in one of the most notorious jewel robberies of the century, when Jack Murphy, known as Murph the Surf, and two accomplices climbed in through a bathroom window and found that the case alarm had a dead battery. The thieves were caught within two days and the stone was recovered from a locker in a Miami bus station.
Did You Know? The 1964 thieves got in through a bathroom window and out again without setting off a single working alarm.
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