Link only available on sub pages

This agraffe, a brooch worn on a hat, the so called Dresden Green, is part of the Brilliant Cut Diamond Garniture – the most valuable set of jewels in the Green Vault.  The rest of the garniture is on display on the ground floor in the Jewel Room of the Baroque Green Vault.

August the Strong’s son, King August III of Poland, whose love of diamonds exceeded even his father’s, acquired the almond-shape Dresden Green. He allegedly paid 400,000 thalers for it – an exorbitant sum at the time. Like most other famous diamonds, this one is shrouded in mystery. It’s the largest green diamond ever found in India, but no-one knows how it arrived in London, where it was presumably cut and polished, or how it came to Dresden. Its green colour is due to the fact that it was subjected to natural radioactivity in the earth.

The jeweller Jean Jacques Pallard mounted it into the decorative badge of the Golden Fleece. This provided August with one of the most magnificent insignia of any ruler of his day. August III’s grandson, the Elector Friedrich August III, however, commissioned his court jeweller, Franz Diespach, to alter it radically. Friedrich August was not a knight of the Golden Fleece Order, and was therefore not entitled to wear the insignia. Diespach broke the badge in 1768 and made the Dresden Green the focal point of this agraffe. It’s surrounded by a huge brilliant-cut diamond of 6.3 ct plus 411 medium and small-sized brilliant-cut diamonds.