BOOK ABOUT HARRY WINSTON "KING OF DIAMONDS"
Last year I finished reading the book Harry Winston: King of Diamonds, written by his son Ronald Winston. I did not expect it to be so packed with valuable information and facts—not only about diamonds and jewellery. I really, really recommend this book also as a form of historical education, as it allows you to see world events such as wars and periods of prosperity from a very different perspective.
It would be impossible to mention here all the knowledge I gained from this book, but below I want to point out the moments that caught my attention the most—and what I find most interesting about Harry Winston himself.
Humble beginnings of Harry Weinstein
Harry Winston was born on March 1, 1896 into poverty in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. The roots of Harry Winston’s story reach back to late-19th-century Russia. Under the reformist czar Alexander II, millions of serfs were freed, but Jewish life remained precarious. After Alexander’s assassination in 1881—an act for which Jews were widely blamed—a decade of violent pogroms followed. Harry Winston’s father, Jacob Weinstein, born in 1864, grew up in this atmosphere of fear and instability. A self-described freethinker, secular and fiercely independent, he avoided conscription, changed his name repeatedly, hid in forests, and lived in constant flight. By 1890, he had escaped Europe altogether, arriving alone at Ellis Island.
By 1901, Jacob Weinstein appeared in the New York City business directory as a retailer of watches and jewellery. At the time, Yiddish was the unofficial language of the jewellery trade, dominated by Eastern European Jewish immigrants—and Jacob spoke it fluently as well. This world valued sharp judgment over sentiment, discretion over display. Jacob distilled his philosophy into a single warning he repeated often: “Your possessions will possess you.” It was less a rejection of wealth than a reminder of control.
When Harry Winston once told his son, “Never trust anyone in life—not even your own father,” it wasn’t cruelty. It was instruction. In the diamond world, trust has always been a fragile currency. Deals are sealed across tables with stones small enough to disappear in a fist and valuable enough to ruin lives. Memory, reputation, and verification matter more than promises. Winston understood that sentimentality has no place in a trade built on scarcity, secrecy, and enormous financial risk.
“Seeing Value Where Others Saw Nothing”
A crucial moment came when Harry Winston was still a boy, working as his father’s runner and messenger, sent down to New York’s Diamond District on errands for Jacob Weinstein. Moving daily among traders, pawnbrokers, and showcases, Harry began to sense that he possessed a rare instinct for jewels. On one of these early trips, a tray of junk jewellery in a pawnshop caught his attention, marked simply: “Take your pick — 25 cents.” One ring, set with a green stone, stood out. Trusting his eye, Harry spent his hard-earned quarter and brought the ring home to his father. Two days later, Jacob sold what proved to be a genuine two-carat emerald for the then-remarkable sum of eight hundred dollars. It was the moment when intuition turned into certainty—and talent revealed itself unmistakably.
After years spent largely outside public record, Harry Weinstein surfaced again in 1921—this time under the name that would become legendary. Listed as Harry Winston in the New York City business directory as proprietor of the Premier Diamond Company, Harry Winston had established himself at 535 Fifth Avenue, an address already synonymous with ambition and prestige. The reappearance marked more than a change of name.
Harry changed his name inspired by another immigrant Jew he admired—Harry Houdini, born Erich Weiss. Houdini grew up in Wisconsin, where his father worked as a circuit-riding rabbi, and reinvented himself completely.
Harry always believed that the three keys to his success were knowledge, courage, and the ability to finance. In the diamond world, understanding a stone is not enough—you must also dare to act, and have the means to follow through. Without all three, even the sharpest eye goes nowhere.
When Europe Was in Ruins, India Held the Jewels
In the 1940s, while much of Europe was financially and physically devastated by war, the true centres of wealth lay elsewhere. The Maharajas of India were, at that time, among the richest men on earth. Their fortunes were not abstract— they were visible, wearable, and unapologetically concentrated in jewellery. Diamonds, emeralds, and pearls were not luxury accessories but portable power, serving as status, security, and legacy all at once.
For the global diamond trade, this reality mattered enormously. While European aristocracy was selling heirlooms to survive, Indian royalty was commissioning and acquiring some of the most important stones in circulation. The jewellery business has always followed capital—not geography. This period exposed a fundamental truth: diamonds migrate toward stability, not tradition. Markets rise and fall, but stones endure, quietly passing from collapsing empires to those still standing.
After India gained independence from Britain, it remained a place of great imperial pomp and privilege. In exchange for bringing their individual states into the new Indian federation, the Maharajas were granted what was known as the privy purse—an annual allowance based on the population of their realm. A ruler governing ten million people would receive ten million dollars a year. This system preserved enormous personal wealth and, with it, an enduring appetite for diamonds and luxury.
From War Zones to Velvet Boxes
In the early 1990s, Angola was one of the world’s major war zones—and at the same time, one of its most important sources of rough diamonds. Since gaining independence from Portugal in 1975, the country had been torn apart by a brutal proxy war between capitalist America and communist Russia. More than a million lives were lost. Control over the richest diamond fields lay with UNITA, led by the fiercely anti-communist Jonas Savimbi, who financed his war effort almost entirely through diamond sales.
It was into this reality that Ronald Winston (Harry Winston's son who is actually the author of this whole book) stepped, travelling to Angola to negotiate directly with Savimbi. The deal—diamonds worth six million dollars—was concluded under extreme conditions, in the midst of an active war zone. African generals and political leaders, dressed in camouflage and heavily armed, surrounded the negotiations. It was tense, dangerous, and far removed from any notion of glamour.
This is the side of the diamond business rarely imagined. Behind the refined beauty of high jewellery lies a history shaped not only by craftsmanship and desire, but by conflict, power, and risk. Diamonds may end their journey in velvet boxes—but their origins are often anything but polished.
Harry Winston - King of Diamonds
Harry Winston always dreamed of owning great stones—not merely beautiful ones, but the largest and most consequential gems ever discovered. In 1935, that ambition materialised with the acquisition of the Jonker Diamond, a 726-carat rough stone from South Africa, second in size at the time only to the Cullinan. A few years later, he secured another monumental purchase: the Vargas Diamond, named after Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas, acquired for the then-extraordinary sum of 700,000 dollars. In 1943, Winston added the 155-carat alluvial El Libertador Diamond, discovered in Venezuela and named after Simón Bolívar. Later still came even greater prizes, including the Indore Pears, the Porter-Rhodes Diamond, and the remarkable Idol’s Eye Diamond.
Only after all these acquisitions did Winston take possession of the most famous stone of all—the Hope Diamond. He didn’t inherit just a diamond, but a legend. Long burdened by stories of an ominous curse, the stone had been blamed for misfortune, financial ruin, and tragedy among its previous owners. In the diamond business, however, Winston saw something else entirely: an extraordinary stone weighed down by narrative rather than by flaw. In 1958, he removed it from commerce altogether, donating the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington—sent, characteristically, by registered mail.
Each of these acquisitions was accompanied by great public spectacle, particularly the much-publicised “transport of the diamond to America.” Yet the reality was far less dramatic—and far more revealing. Stones of this magnitude were often sent by ordinary post, insured and mailed for mere cents. No armoured convoys. No cinematic drama. In the diamond world, true security has always relied less on theatre than on discretion. The contrast says everything: while the public consumed romance, the trade operated on trust, understatement, and absolute confidence in systems invisible to outsiders.
Diamonds as Weapons
During the Second World War, diamonds were not symbols of luxury but instruments of power. What Adolf Hitler sought in Brazil was not glamour, but industrial diamonds—essential for machining precision weapons, aircraft components, and emerging technologies such as radar. Modern warfare had become technologically dependent, and diamonds were critical to that transformation. Controlling their flow became a strategic priority. With De Beers holding near-total control over global diamond supply, Germany’s access was severely constrained. Smuggling from African mines proved insufficient, leaving South America—outside De Beers’ control—as the most viable alternative.
It was here that Harry Winston acted decisively, long before the war fully erupted. Recognising the strategic value of diamonds and other minerals, he invested aggressively in South America, paying miners unprecedented prices to outbid Nazi buyers. Winston went further, backing his purchases with gold to stabilise the Brazilian cruzeiro—an economic strategy that ensured preferential access from President Getúlio Vargas. While black-market smuggling to Germany never ceased entirely, Winston’s intervention significantly disrupted Nazi supply chains. It was a stark reminder that diamonds, long associated with beauty, have also shaped the outcomes of modern conflict—quietly and far from public view.
Random Facts
- Henry E. Huntington, known as the “Trolley King,” was president of the Pacific Electric Company, the largest electric street railway system in the world. He was based in Los Angeles, then still a relatively small and culturally unrefined city. Yet Huntington himself was no philistine. He owned a Gutenberg Bible, one of the world’s great libraries of English Renaissance literature, and assembled an unparalleled collection of English art. His wife, Arabella Huntington, possessed a jewellery and diamond collection worthy of the woman often called the Queen of California. It is a reminder that new money and great taste are not opposites—and that serious collectors often emerge far from traditional cultural capitals.
- Amadeo Peter Giannini, better known as A.P. Giannini, built what began as the Bank of Italy into what would later become Bank of America. Long before banking became institutional and monumental, it was personal and improvised—the very word banco refers to the simple benches from which early lenders conducted their business in public view.
Links:
https://www.amazon.com/King-Diamonds-Flawless-World-Winston/dp/1510775609
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