In 1926, a 10-year-old Arkansas girl helping her father hoe weeds in a cotton field spotted something unusual gleaming in the dirt. She picked up what she called a “pretty pebble” and kept it as a curiosity. Little did Alice Taylor know that her pocket-sized treasure was a 27.21-carat rough diamond — believed to be the second-largest diamond ever discovered in Arkansas. Now, a century after its discovery, the celebrated stone has returned to its home state for a special exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.
For roughly 20 years after it was found, the diamond remained an unrecognized family keepsake. After Alice grew up and married, becoming Mrs. Pelie Howell, she stored the stone in a small leather pouch in her dresser drawer. Its adventures included an accidental disappearance beneath the family’s porch, where one of her children had dropped it through a knothole. The shiny pebble was recovered about a year later when another child crawled underneath the porch looking for hidden chicken eggs.
The family eventually began to wonder whether the stone might be more than an ordinary rock. One day, Howell accidentally dragged it across her iron stove and discovered that it scratched the metal without suffering any apparent damage. Suspecting it could be a diamond, she and her husband took it to jewelers in nearby Searcy. Their hopes were met with laughter and skepticism.
The objection seemed logical: Arkansas’s famous diamond-bearing volcanic formation is near Murfreesboro, far from Searcy. The two towns are approximately 163 miles apart. How could a diamond have ended up in a cotton field so far from the state’s recognized diamond source?
The mystery has never been definitively solved. One theory suggests that Native Americans may have discovered the stone near Murfreesboro centuries earlier and traded it north. Whatever its journey, the diamond had spent two decades in the Howell family’s possession before its true identity was established.
In May 1946, the stone was sent to specialists, who confirmed that it was a genuine 27.21-carat diamond. Tiffany & Co. purchased it from Howell for a reported $8,500 — a remarkable windfall for a modest family. The money reportedly enabled her to buy a new home and pay off the mortgage on her parents’ farm, the very property where she had found the diamond as a child.
Tiffany chose not to cut or polish the stone. Instead, the company preserved it in its original rough form, maintaining the appearance of the remarkable crystal that had emerged from the Arkansas soil. It subsequently became part of the Tiffany Archives in New York.
Now, the Arkansas Diamond is taking center stage in “Nature Adorned: The Artistry of Tiffany & Co. and the American Imagination,” on view at Crystal Bridges from October 9, 2026, through March 29, 2027. The exhibition also includes two other notable diamonds discovered in Arkansas, alongside exceptional Tiffany jewelry and works from the museum’s collection.
Jewelry highlights include naturalistic orchid brooches created by George Paulding Farnham in the late 19th century, as well as Jean Schlumberger’s elaborate "Hedges and Flowers" necklace and iconic "Bird on a Rock" creations.
The "Hedges and Flowers" necklace (1978-1987) features intense pinkish-red tourmalines, turquoise and brilliant round diamonds set in gold and platinum.
The Bird on a Rock brooch (1965) captures a majestic, hand-sculpted platinum bird accented with 18-karat yellow gold perched atop a vibrant blue-violet tanzanite. The bird is pavé-set with brilliant-cut diamonds and features a bezel-set pink sapphire for its eye.
Credits: Images courtesy of Tiffany & Co. Archives.