The Topkapi Emerald Dagger

I was just flipping through some pages of a National Geographic magazine from 1990, when I stumbled upon a whole section on emeralds. 

This is the best photo I could find on Flickr sadly -  All rights reserved by Traci L.A.

Read all about the Dagger on Internet stones:

The Topkapi Emerald Dagger is the renowned jewel-studded dagger of mid-18th century origin, preserved and displayed for public viewing at the treasury of the Topkapi Palace Museum, in Istanbul, Turkey. One side of the handle of the dagger is set with three large Colombian emeralds of good color and clarity whose size and prominence undoubtedly gave the dagger its popular name. The exquisitely crafted jewel-studded dagger was actually one of several other valuable gifts that was carried by an embassy of Sultan Mahmud I (1730-54) to Iran, to be gifted to the mighty Iranian conqueror Nadir Shah, but unfortunately was not delivered as Nadir Shah was assassinated, when the embassy just crossed the borders of the Ottoman Empire into Iranian territory. The gifts including the jewel-studded dagger were then returned to the treasury at Istanbul, and eventually became one of the most celebrated treasures in the treasury of the Topkapi Palace Museum. The popularity of the dagger, as well as the museum that holds it, were given a major boost worldwide, when it was made the subject of a popular Hollywood heist film in 1964, based on Eric Ambler's novel "The Light of Day."

 

Characteristics of the emerald dagger

The three emeralds on the handle are large, deep green stones with good clarity and transparency. The emeralds are mounted on the handle on one side. The upper and lower emeralds have an identical pear-shaped cut, with almost identical sizes and set with their pointed ends facing each other. The middle emerald is a rectangular cushion-cut stone, whose width is slightly less than the width of the pear-shaped stones. The outline of this vertical arrangement of emeralds seem to coincide with the conventional biconcave shape of a dagger, which gives a firm grip on its handle. The emeralds are interspersed with smaller diamonds placed at the four corners of the rectangle in the middle and the four corners of the trapezia situated above and below the rectangle. At the end of the handle is an octagonal-shaped emerald, set as a cover, which when opened revealed a small watch. READ MORE...