On the occasion of the Hope Diamond’s 50th year of display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Museum is inviting jewellery enthusiasts to select a setting for the diamond from three options. Harry Winston, who had donated the blue 45.52-carat stone to the museum, has created the three setting options, which can be viewed and voted on the museum’s website - http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/hope.

The most preferred setting will be announced post summer season, and the diamond will be set and displayed in its new setting in May. Also, a documentary on the history of the diamond will feature on the Smithsonian Channel during the May month.

History has it that the Hope or the “Great Blue Diamond” as was popularly known, entered India in a crudely cut triangular shape of 112 carats, by Flemish adventurer Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. It was sold to France’s King Louis XIV, who got the stone cut into a heart-shape weighing 68.8 carats and set in gold suspended on a neck ribbon. After the French Revolution, the stone went unknown until it resurfaced in a published catalogue of the gem collection of Henry Philip Hope. It changed many hands, until Harry Winston bought the diamond in 1949 and donated it to the Museum in 1958, reports say.