At Frieze Masters this year you can find many ancient objects. The David Aaron gallery has again brought millions-year-old dinosaur fossils as well as an Egyptian sculpture that dates from around 570BC-526BC. Other galleries are offering Roman antiquities and old maps. But nothing is as old as what is on show at a new display at the back of the fair: diamonds, which date back to the Earth’s infancy, 3.5 billion years ago.
The diamond company De Beers has partnered with Frieze Masters to present an immersive installation about the coveted stones. The mastermind behind the installation is Lynn Serfaty from De Beers, who explains that while many of the objects at Frieze Masters go “back 100,000 years to 50 years ago”, with diamonds the timeline is so much greater. “Can our brains really conceive 3.5 billion years?” she asks.
Titled Voyage Through the Diamond Realm, the installation “invites audiences to journey through the timeless myths, tales and mysteries that surround these natural works of art”. Shown in a womb-like curved space, the 20-minute-long film brings together some of the many stories about diamonds from history, culture and science.
In the entrance is a sculpture commissioned from craftspeople in Botswana, where some of De Beers’s diamonds are sourced. It incorporates small uncut diamonds of varying colours, surrounded by a pattern made using the shell of ostrich eggs.
“Diamonds are a natural work of art in themselves and they’ve been celebrated as such,” Serfaty says, adding that they have been venerated by ancient cultures including Pliny the Elder, who called them “the most precious of all human belongings”.
“So we have these two stories of both the marvel of nature and the marvel of craftsmanship that come together in the diamond. I think that over recent years maybe this dimension has been forgotten,” Serfaty says. “And we want people to know what they own. [A diamond] is not just there to compare to your neighbour’s [diamond].”
This is the first time De Beers have created a presentation for an art fair, but they hope to do more in the future. “There are so many stories to tell,” Serfaty says.
