A Walnut-Size Ruby With a Love Story to Tell

October 14, 2004
By ELIZABETH OLSON, New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 - Every fabulous gem has a love story, and the 23.1-carat Burmese ruby donated to the National Gem Collection, which the Smithsonian Institution will announce on Thursday, is no exception.

The pinkish-red stone, big as a walnut, set in platinum and flanked by two substantial triangular diamonds, was never actually owned, or even worn, by Carmen Lucia Buck, whose husband, Peter, gave it to the country in her name.

The Brazilian-born Mrs. Buck, who loved and collected jewelry, including diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, heard about the large, finely faceted ruby before she died last year, said Mr. Buck, 73, a founder of the Subway sandwich chain.

"It epitomized what she liked - the finer things - and her generosity in setting up foundations for medical causes," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Danbury, Conn.

"So it seemed like a really appropriate thing to do, to give it to the nation so people could come and see it," he said. "She would have really liked that people could see it and know it was the Carmen Lucia ruby, and that it wasn't locked away in a vault somewhere."

He gave the Smithsonian the money (he won't say how much, only that "the value is a lot") to purchase the ring, worth many millions of dollars. The stone, which had been in private hands for decades, will be displayed beginning on Saturday at the National Museum of Natural History, where it will join the gem collection's most famous piece, the Hope Diamond.

Although not so large as the blue Hope diamond, donated by the jeweler Harry Winston, the Carmen Lucia ruby is unusual because high-quality Burmese rubies larger than 20 carats are exceedingly rare, said Jeffrey Post, a mineralogist who is the collection's curator.

"Of all the rubies known, this would rank up in the very top as the largest and finest because of its size, clarity, good color and brightness, and its pinkish highlights," Mr. Post said, showing off the ruby in the secure vault where the gem was being kept while its display case was built.

The ruby was mined in the 1930's in the Mogok region of Burma, now called Myanmar, and was owned by several European families before it was bought by a New York jeweler some 15 years ago and stored in a safe deposit box, Mr. Post said.

Mrs. Buck, who died of colon cancer at 52, heard about the ruby from a Danbury jeweler, who showed her a photograph of the gem. She and her husband, a graduate of Columbia University, met in New York City less than a year after she had arrived from Brazil to study and baby-sit. They married in 1978 and had one son.

The ruby will be displayed with an uncut ruby and a diamond-and-ruby bracelet in a new exhibit in the Smithsonian's gem hall. It will be flanked by a collection of huge sapphires, which share the same material, corundum, or aluminum oxide, Mr. Post said.