Just when you thought the museum scene couldn’t get any bet­ter, or at least more beau­ti­ful than the Art Nou­veau trea­sures at The Cincin­nati Art Museum, comes along a show enti­tled The Nature of Dia­monds at The Field Museum in Chicago. The exhi­bi­tion will be on show from Octo­ber 23^rd until March 28, 2010.

The focus is as all-consuming as the gem itself, and explores geo­log­i­cal data, the min­ing process, retail and fash­ion aspects, and of course some pretty fab­u­lous rocks, includ­ing Princess Matilda’s cor­sage orna­ment (yes, the one in my book) on loan from the ven­er­a­bly posh and uber pri­vate Siegel­son. The rose, which is nearly six inches in width, was made for Princess Mathilde, niece of Napoleon I in 1855, and was later owned by Mrs. Cor­nelius Van­der­bilt, the head­mistress of New York soci­ety. The motif reflects the typ­i­cally lush pre­sen­ta­tion of court jew­els dur­ing the mid-nineteenth-century as well as a devout rev­er­ence for flora, depicted in its organic and garden-plucked glory. The gem-laden com­po­si­tion was set with 2,637 Brazil­ian dia­monds weigh­ing one-hundred-and-thirty-six carats and eight-hundred-and-sixty smaller stones.