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190 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
principle.
Their success was so marked that these stones were afterwards known as
the " Twelve Mazarins." Unfortunately these rare gems were poorly
guarded and all but the tenth had disappeared by 1791. The French
cutter Jarlet gained an international reputation in the seventeenth
century by cutting one of the notable jewels of the Russian crown
weighing 90 carats, but the industry withered in France in spite of its
special encouragement by Mazarin and other powerful ministers.
England
and Holland had secured almost exclusive trade relations with the East,
from whence the diamond supply was obtained. Hence the Hebrews of these
countries secured control of the diamond industry, and French
lapidaries sought employment in vain. Then the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes flooded Holland with French refugees. Of the seventy-five
diamond cutters whom Mazarin had so carefully guarded, only five
remained in 1775. Inquiry showed that the total rough diamond stock in
Paris, just before the outbreak of the Revolution of 1789, was only
3832 carats, and there was little employment obtainable in recutting
old stones. During the Revolution and the troubled Napoleonic reign,
the industry was fatally paralyzed, and diamonds were sent out of
France to Antwerp for cutting.
In
the eighteenth century there was a determined push in England to foster
the diamond-cutting industry, and some expert workmen, headed by Ralph
Potter, made a stout struggle to hold the home trade. The so-called
"Old English style" was developed on strict mathematical lines, and
gems cut by these artists are still eagerly sought as models of the
lapidary's art; but the centralizing drift to Holland was too strong
for competition until the discovery of the South African Diamond
Fields. In the last twenty years the languishing art has raised its
head in England, and become, without doubt, a well-established
industry. A hundred and fifty years ago London was accounted the chief
centre of business for lapidaries, and it is not beyond expectation
that its former preeminence may be reestablished. Even now it is
thought that diamond crystals
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