The Liberty Bell Ruby is a sculpted ruby carving in the form of the Philadelphia Liberty Bell, weighing approximately 8,500 carats and reported as the largest mined ruby in the world. The carving was executed in the 1970s from rough material reportedly sourced from East Africa, and is set with around fifty diamonds. It was commissioned by Beverly Hills jeweller Kazanjian Brothers, and for several decades was loaned to public exhibition and used as a centrepiece in promotional displays around national American themes.

Material and form

The carving is a corundum mass and not a faceted gemstone in the ordinary sense. Its trade significance lies more in its scale than in its colour: at thousands of carats the working surface is large enough that local colour zoning, silk and crystalline irregularity are visible to the unaided eye, and assessment of such an object proceeds along the lines applied to gem-quality carved sculpture rather than to faceted stones. The form references the cracked Liberty Bell on the eastern end of Independence Mall in Philadelphia, including a representation of the Bell's famous longitudinal split.

The 2011 theft

The carving entered the news cycle in March 2011 when it was stolen during an armed robbery at the Kazanjian Brothers showroom in Wilmington, Delaware. Three armed men removed the carving and other goods. The case attracted federal attention because of the value at stake, reported variously between two and three million US dollars, and because of the cultural recognisability of the object. The carving was not recovered in the immediate aftermath of the heist and the matter remained an open law-enforcement file for an extended period.

Trade significance

The Liberty Bell Ruby occupies an unusual category in the trade. It is famous more as a marketing object and as a record-carrying carving than as a gemmologically remarkable specimen, and the ruby community has not historically treated it as a benchmark stone in the same manner as the Sunrise Ruby, the De Long Star Ruby or the Mogok pigeon-blood corundum standard. Its recurring appearances in popular write-ups about the largest gemstones, however, mean that working dealers will encounter the name in client questions and should be able to place it accurately: a large East African-origin ruby carving, of presentation rather than wearable form, with a complicated post-2011 location history.

What the Liberty Bell Ruby is not

It should not be confused with the older Liberty Bell, the iron-and-bronze bell of Independence Hall, nor with the various other patriotic-themed gem carvings that circulated through the same Beverly Hills workshop. It also should not be cited as a Burmese ruby; published trade accounts place the rough source in Africa, and the carving's date in the 1970s makes a Mogok provenance for material at this scale difficult to defend.