The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Jewels in Motion: The Patiala Necklace

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Our series on the grand royal jewels made by Cartier continues today with a whopper of a piece: the necklace commissioned from the firm by the Maharaja of Patiala.

The necklace is the single largest commission ever made by Cartier. In 1928, Sir Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patialia, arrived at the firm’s Paris headquarters with literal buckets full of loose gems and asked them to make him a necklace.
Among the bounty of loose gemstones was one very important diamond: the 234.69-carat De Beers Diamond, which the maharaja had inherited from his father, Maharaja Sir Rajinder Singh. Rajinder had purchased the pale yellow, golf ball-sized diamond, which was at the time the seventh-largest polished diamond in the world, after seeing it exhibited in Paris in the 1880s.
In 2002, Wendy Moonan of the New York Times described the creation process: “The necklace is basically Art Deco in style; Cartier was at the vanguard of designing jewelry, clocks and objets d’art in the Deco style. When the necklace was completed in 1928, Cartier was so proud of the craftsmanship that it asked if the necklace could be exhibited before being sent to India. The maharajah agreed.”
The gemstone count on the finished necklace was, well, insane. The platinum necklace was set with 2,390 diamonds, including the De Beers and a large diamond described as “tobacco-colored.” Two Burmese rubies were also set in the piece. 
The necklace became one of the flamboyant prince’s most treasured pieces of jewelry, and he wore it regularly until his death in 1938. The necklace was last worn in public by his son, Maharaja Yadavindra Singh, in 1941.
And then the necklace went missing from the Patiala treasury, although some believe that it may have been quietly sold for tax reasons. In 1982, the De Beers Diamond popped up at auction at Sotheby’s Geneva. And then, in 1998, a Cartier associate, Eric Nussbaum, found the platinum chains of the necklace in a second-hand jewelry store in London. 
Nussbaum convinced Cartier that they should purchase the remaining parts of the necklace and restore it, replacing the enormous missing gemstones with synthetic stones and cubic zirconium. It took Cartier’s jewelers two years to restore the magnificent piece.
Now, Cartier regularly exhibits the necklace, so that all of us can experience a little bit of the incredible wealth and lifestyle of Patiala’s most extravagant ruler.

The Vasa Tiara

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Crown Princess Märtha of Norway (with Crown Prince Olav) wears the Vasa Tiara, 1929 (National Archive of Norway/Wikimedia Commons)

The Norwegian monarchy may be a young one, but the current royal family has quite a stash of jewelry, thanks to their descent from Danish, British, and Swedish royalty. Today’s sparkler, the Vasa Tiara, came into the Norwegian vaults through the current king’s mother, Crown Princess Märtha, who was royal in her own right.

Crown Princess Märtha wears the Vasa Tiara (National Archive of Norway/Wikimedia Commons)

You might be asking yourself why a tiara named after an old Swedish royal dynasty is currently worn by a Norwegian princess; the simple answer is that said princess’s mother happened to be born a Swedish princess. When Princess Märtha of Sweden, daughter of Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg, married the future King Olav V of Norway in 1929, the city of Stockholm decided they needed to give their princess a proper Swedish send-off in the form of a tiara. (They did the same for Märtha’s sister, Astrid, on her marriage to a future king of Belgium, but that diamond and pearl sparkler, the Stockholm Tiara, hasn’t been seen in a very long time.)

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The diamond and platinum tiara was made by C.F. Carlman. It takes its name from the heraldic symbol of the Vasa dynasty, which is incorporated into the central element of the tiara. The Vasas hadn’t ruled in Sweden for centuries by the time the Bernadottes showed up on the scene in 1810; the last Vasa ruler was the rather infamous Queen Christina. But the Bernadottes can claim kinship to the Vasas, because they were deliberate about marrying royal women who descended from that old Swedish line. Two Bernadotte queens, Joséphine of Leuchtenberg and Victoria of Baden, were Vasa descendants, which means that Princess Märtha was, too.

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In the photograph above, taken about the time of Olav and Märtha’s wedding, you can see Märtha’s left hand resting on the Vasa Tiara, which sits in its case among her wedding gifts.

Princess Ragnhild (standing behind the Duke of Edinburgh) wears the tiara at Oslo’s National Theatre during the British state visit to Norway, June 1955 (National Archive of Norway/Wikimedia Commons)

The new Norwegian crown princess wore her new tiara on a regular basis, and she also loaned the Art Deco sparkler to her two daughters, Ragnhild and Astrid. The tiara was originally intended to be one of those fashionable 1920s forehead bandeaux, as you can see in the portrait of Olav and Märtha at the top of this post. Thankfully, it transformed nicely to a more traditional “top of the head” tiara.

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Crown Princess Märtha never became Norway’s queen. She died of cancer in 1954, and her children officially divided up her jewels (and those of the late Queen Maud) several years later, after King Harald married Queen Sonja. Astrid was the lucky recipient of this tiara. But Trond Norén Isaksen has noted that Astrid essentially treats the piece like a lifetime loan. She plans to have the diadem returned to the royal vaults after her eventual death — hopefully at a time far, far in the future.


Note: This is an updated version of an earlier post, with new text and images.