Los Angeles Times
Jan 5 2010
Quite the gem dandy
Once overlooked, now breathtaking in its beauty, a 733-carat sapphire
has a history worthy of its weight.
By Victoria Kim
January 5, 2010
The boy brought home a dull-colored half-pound stone he found on the
hillside, and his father, Harry Spencer, thought of the perfect place
for it. They would use it as a doorstop.
The year was 1938, and their home was a modest shack in a sparsely
populated, dusty stretch of gem-mining territory in central
Queensland, Australia. The stone sat at the backdoor for 10 years,
until a jeweler recognized its potential and brought it across the
Pacific. In Los Angeles, it was polished to reveal a six-pronged,
mesmerizingly beautiful star — or so goes the story that is passed
down about the largest-known star sapphire in the world.
The Black Star of Queensland would make its way around the world,
weaving in and out of spotlight and obscurity, with stops in the
Smithsonian in the ’60s, on Cher’s neck in the ’70s, and at the Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto in 2007. It would capture the fantasy of a
young boy, who would dream of one day owning it. It would be mounted
on white gold and 35 diamonds added around its rim.
Some profess the stone has a certain magic, bringing luck to the
fortunate few who have touched it. One owner said it brought on the
darkest period of her life, leaving memories she never wanted to
revisit.
Eventually, as many prized things do, it landed in L.A. County
Superior Court, at the center of allegations of deception, unkept
promises and a lover’s betrayal.
Harry Kazanjian learned to polish stones because of an eye infection.
About 1908, his family fled from Turkey to France to escape the
persecutions that preceded the Armenian genocide. When they tried to
board a ship bound for the United States, guards wouldn’t let young
Harry on because of his eye. As his family sailed across the Atlantic,
Harry stayed behind in Paris and apprenticed for his stonecutter
uncle.
Kazanjian discovered he had a knack for envisioning a gemstone in the
rough, the way sculptors see a finished work in a slab of marble. When
he reunited with his family, he persuaded his brother James to go into
the gem business with him.
The brothers traveled the world buying rare and valuable stones. The
Spencer family had sold them many blue and yellow sapphires. One day
in 1947, Harry Kazanjian saw a pile of black stones at the Spencers’
home that they had thought worthless. He asked to inspect them,
thinking they might be star sapphires. Spencer told his son to go get
the doorstop.
In the fist-sized stone, Kazanjian spotted a copper-colored glimmer, a
hint of the impurity that sometimes grows along a sapphire’s crystals
to create the star, an optical effect known as an asterism. He bought
it, reportedly for $18,000, and brought it to the shop he ran with his
brother in downtown L.A.
Amid the whirring of grinding wheels and hissing of polishing
machines, Kazanjian studied the stone for weeks before cutting into
it. Over months, he worked, bent over a copper wheel impregnated with
diamond dust, gently carving away to create a dome.
"I could have ruined it a hundred times during the cutting," Kazanjian
told a Times reporter at the time.
In 1948, the Black Star of Queensland debuted in New York. Actress
Linda Darnell cradled the egg-sized stone in her fingers and held it
up for the cameras. At 733 carats, it was far larger than the Star of
India, a 563-carat blue star sapphire previously known to be the
largest.
It was valued at $300,000, but the Kazanjians "declared emphatically"
that it wasn’t for sale.
Michael Kazanjian, Harry’s nephew, spent his summers and weekends as a
child at the shop, trying to emulate his uncle’s craft on
less-valuable gems. He had watched in awe as his uncle polished the
Black Star.
To him, the stone was like a member of the family. He would
occasionally visit it at the family vault and talk to it, and it would
talk back, he said.
"The stone had a lovely personality," said Michael, who took over the
family business in the 1970s. "Very dramatic, very powerful."
One day, in 1971, he saw an opportunity to show it off when a
Hollywood manager called him with an odd request: "Can you put a few
million dollars of jewelry on Cher?" By then, Sonny and Cher had seen
their fame ebb. After a failed film venture and lackluster album
sales, they were taking a stab at something new: a television variety
show. In the premiere, they planned a sketch where Cher would be
decked out in valuable gems, and security guards would keep Sonny away
as he sang "Close to You."
Cher’s first stop had been Tiffany’s. But when the show’s producers
learned insurance would cost $8,000, they looked for another option.
Instead of insurance, Michael hired half a dozen police officers to
escort him and the Black Star to the studio. The stone was tied on by
hand with a flimsy wire to a necklace with about 100 carats of
diamonds.
A few hours into the taping, he panicked. Cher was dancing. Michael
jumped up on stage and stopped the take, fearing the stone would drop
and shatter.
After its brief television fame, the stone sat out of public view for
the most part, making only occasional appearances at private charity
functions. It has never been worn since.
Jack Armstrong says he was a 5-year-old living in Blair, Neb., when he
first laid eyes on the Black Star. That summer, his father, an
auditor, took him on a trip to Washington, where the Kazanjians had
lent the stone to the Smithsonian for a display with the Hope Diamond.
Armstrong said he breezed past the diamond but became fixated on the
sapphire.
"It took my breath away," he said. "It’s like you see your future in
front of your eyes."
In 2002, he was introduced to the Kazanjians and was invited to see
their collection. When he saw the Black Star, he couldn’t believe he
was looking at the stone from his childhood and immediately wanted to
buy it.
Armstrong, a former model now in his 50s with no shortage of
flamboyance, says he is an artist and a dealer of art and antiques.
Attorneys have described him in court papers as a man with no
discernible source of income who lived off a wealthy older girlfriend,
a divorcee living in Switzerland.
"I’ve never met a personality like him," said Doug Kazanjian,
Michael’s son, who met with Armstrong about the sale. "He had this
overwhelming passion to buy it."
After the sapphire had been in the family for more than 50 years, the
Kazanjians decided to sell it to fund a scholarship at the Gemological
Institute of America.
Armstrong arranged to buy the stone with his girlfriend. He was so in
love with it, he said, that he slept with it under his pillow and
drove around with it in his jacket.
But love or no love, he was quick to slap on a price tag and offer it
for sale. A month after he bought it for an undisclosed amount, he
issued a press release saying the sapphire was available — for $50
million.
"The sale of the Black Star sapphire is a huge event in the gem stone
market," Armstrong said in the press release in December 2002. "To
have a stone like this come on the market is tantamount to having a
Raphael painting suddenly emerge for sale; it happens maybe once,
maybe twice in a lifetime."
Gabrielle Grohe had never heard of the Black Star, and in hindsight,
she might wish it stayed that way.
In her 60s and wealthy from an earlier marriage to an industrialist,
she was introduced to Armstrong in 2002.
Her version of the tale, as told in court papers by her attorney, is
filled with scathing accusations against Armstrong, her onetime lover.
(Armstrong, whose attorneys never responded to the allegations,
declined to discuss the court case.)
Within days of their meeting, Armstrong told her about the stone and
pressured her to buy it. She paid the bill, and he promised to pay
part of it, Grohe contended.
The next year, Armstrong moved to Switzerland to live with Grohe.
Armstrong said in an interview that he went to Europe to pursue his
art; Grohe contended he refused to get a job and relied on her for his
extravagant living expenses.
Soon, their relationship soured. He drank heavily, became physically
abusive and got angry when she brought up his promise to pay for the
stone, she alleged. In September 2007, Grohe called the police, bought
him a plane ticket back to the U.S. and kicked him out.
That marked the beginning of an international tussle for control of the stone.
The next month, Grohe met with a potential buyer in Canada, where the
sapphire was on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, with its value
then estimated at $4.1 million. Armstrong foiled her efforts at a
sale, "desperate at the thought that his gravy train would end," she
alleged.
When the loan to the museum came to an end in 2008, Armstrong, who was
listed as a co-owner in the museum’s records, went behind Grohe’s back
and asked that it be shipped to him in Los Angeles, in care of the
Harry Winston jewelry shop in Beverly Hills, according to court
documents.
A few weeks later, Armstrong showed up at the shop with a woman he
said was a buyer and asked for the stone. The salon director, Goli
Parstabar, had learned of the dispute and refused.
Furious, Armstrong returned with police officers, but was rebuffed.
Then he had an attorney send a demand letter. When that didn’t work,
he sued Harry Winston for $25 million and issued press releases saying
his stone was being held hostage.
"I was born in Kansas," Armstrong told the New York Post, which ran a
story with the headline "HEAVYWEIGHT GEM $CUFFLE." "If something like
this happened in Wichita, someone would have gone to jail!"
In court, the allegations escalated. Armstrong alleged that Parstabar
had cost him a lucrative deal and ruined his reputation by refusing to
show the stone to his client. Grohe accused Armstrong of fraud and
unlawfully trying to take control of the stone, for which she
contended he never paid a dime.
Doug Kazanjian wears his grandfather’s ring with a stone just like the
Black Star — only 700 carats smaller.
"It’s almost as if you’re looking into space," he said of the stone.
"It’s like having the universe on your finger."
Last year, he was asked by an attorney in the case to identify his
family heirloom.
He was ushered into a private room at a Beverly Hills bank, where
attorneys, Parstabar, and Armstrong huddled around him. Before him was
a tightly wrapped cardboard shipping box that had sat untouched since
it arrived from Toronto. All eyes focused on him opening the box.
He sifted through bubble wrap and tissue paper until he found the
velvet case holding the stone.
"It was like getting to see an old friend," he recalled.
He inspected the diamonds, and the mounting. He scanned the graining
at the top of the stone. He shined a flashlight to create the six
point star.
This is the Black Star of Queensland, he wrote on a piece of paper,
and signed it.
The legal dispute quietly settled out of court in a confidential
agreement. According to a court document, Armstrong agreed to pay
$500,000 within three months to buy out Grohe.
At 5 p.m., on the last day that he could claim ownership, a personal
check from Armstrong arrived at Grohe’s attorney’s office. The check
bounced.
A few months later, a judge entered a final ruling: the stone was all hers.
The Black Star of Queensland once again sits in obscurity, with its
owner in Switzerland. Grohe wants to put that period of her life
behind her and would rather not talk about it, her attorney said. She
hasn’t decided what to do with the stone.
Armstrong, meanwhile, says it’s enough for him that he once held the
sapphire he fantasized about as a child. Though he lost the court
battle, the gem brought him good fortune in his work and life, he
said.
He wants to make a film about the stone, he says, for "every little
kid who dreams." He says he is on the brink of a deal with a studio.
He imagines it will be a tale of a princess trapped in an enchanted
stone, and a boy who finds it by chance.
"It’s a magical story," he said. "It should be told."
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