The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

The Fife Tiara

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Princess Louise, Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife [1]
It’s a new month, and that means it’s time for us to take a peek into the jewel box of another royal lady. This month, we’ll be marveling at jewels from the collection of Princess Louise, Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife. We’re kicking off the series with her most famous piece, the Fife tiara. Enjoy!

One of the most stunning tiaras in the collections of the extended British royal family, the Fife tiara was given to Princess Louise, the daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, as a wedding gift in 1889. Louise’s new husband had inherited the Fife earldom when his father died; but that title wasn’t quite lofty enough for a granddaughter of the monarch, so Queen Victoria made him the Duke of Fife just before the wedding.

Princess Louise [5]

The tiara was a gift from the newly-elevated duke to his bride [2]. It seems extremely likely that the tiara was constructed based on a design by Oscar Massin, who had exhibited a very similar piece at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878. Massin didn’t generally produce his tiara designs himself; instead, he partnered with other jewelry firms who executed the pieces he’d created. However, the maker of this tiara has never been positively identified. A special issue of The Graphic, published in August 1889 to celebrate the Fife wedding, describes the tiara as follows: “in a very uncommon and beautiful design, composed of hundreds of stones, ranging in weight from one carat to ten, the larger being what are technically known as briolettes — that is cut on both sides and turning on pivots so that they will flash with every movement of the head” [3]. Another contemporary news report describes the tiara given by the duke as “a mass of diamonds, and one of the most valuable pieces of work in England” [4].


The Duke of Fife’s title, like most in the United Kingdom, was originally designed to pass only to sons. However, Louise’s only son was stillborn. Queen Victoria intervened once more, reissuing the Fife dukedom and making it possible for Louise’s daughters to inherit their father’s title. In due course, Louise’s elder daughter, Lady Alexandra, inherited both the Fife dukedom and the Fife tiara. She wore the Fife tiara at the coronations of King George VI in 1937 and Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

Alexandra married Prince Arthur of Connaught, who was also a direct descendant of Queen Victoria; she was generally associated with her Connaught title rather than the Fife dukedom. Their only son, Alastair, died in rather unusual circumstances — he was serving in World War II, but he died after, er, getting drunk and falling out of a window. Alexandra’s title — and the Fife tiara — both subsequently were inherited by her nephew, James.

Since then, the tiara has mostly been seen at family weddings. Both the daughter and daughter-in-law of the current duke have worn it; the most recent Fife wedding was in 2001. It also appeared in the major exhibition of tiaras at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The tiara hasn’t been photographed in recent years, and many have feared that it was perhaps privately sold. It’s possible we won’t know the fate of the Fife until another major occasion — either a family wedding or perhaps a coronation — provides the family with a reason to take it out of the vaults [6].


NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped image from a picture postcard of Princess Louise; image in the public domain; original here.
2. Geoffrey Munn argues that the tiara was a gift from Louise’s parents (see Munn, pg. 123), but contemporary newspaper reports clarify that this tiara was a gift from Lord Fife. Bertie and Alexandra (then Prince and Princess of Wales) gave Louise a diamond fringe tiara/necklace.
3. The Graphic article is excerpted by Ursula at her site; see here.
4. See the report from Press here.
5. Cropped image from a picture postcard of the Fifes, available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
6. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in March 2013.

A Tale of Two Fringes

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Princess Charlotte of Monaco wears her tiara russe [1]
We interrupt your usual weekend jewel schedule with a special post inspired by this weekend’s wedding in Switzerland — stand by tomorrow for your usual chance to play jewel detective!
Yesterday, royal watchers (including yours truly) were shocked to see Tatiana Santo Domingo, the wife of Andrea Casiraghi, arrive at her religious wedding ceremony in Gstaad wearing a diamond fringe tiara. The Grimaldi family, including those members who have an HSH preceding their names, aren’t especially big on jewelry, particularly tiaras. The current Princess of Monaco, Charlene, didn’t wear a tiara at her own wedding ceremony, and she’s only worn one small aigrette in public (at her wedding reception). And while Princess Caroline does wear tiaras and other jewels, to my knowledge, Princess Stephanie has never worn a tiara in public at all.
So when Tatiana, Princess Caroline’s daughter-in-law, appeared in a diamond fringe, most of us were understandably excited. Attention immediately went to the jewel vaults of Monaco, and the tiara pictured above — Princess Charlotte’s diamond fringe tiara — was pegged as a potential candidate for Tatiana’s tiara.
The diamond fringe tiara belonged to Princess Charlotte of Monaco, the grandmother of the current sovereign prince. She received it from her father, Prince Louis II, as a wedding present in 1920. The piece, which has been attributed to Cartier, may have been inherited by Louis from his mother, Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton [2]. Mary Victoria was the daughter of a Scottish peer, the Duke of Hamilton, and her mother was a German princess, Marie Amelie of Baden [3]. The fringe tiara is apparently referred to by the Grimaldis as a tiara russe — this makes sense given the fringe tiara’s design roots in the kokoshnik-mad imperial court of the Romanovs. Ultimately, the provenance of the piece has never been made entirely clear, though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it is a nineteenth-century piece.
Princess Caroline’s
fringe necklace [6]
Charlotte was only photographed in the tiara once (to my knowledge). In the years since her death, many (including me) have identified a diamond fringe necklace worn by her granddaughter, Princess Caroline, as Charlotte’s tiara russe removed from its frame. But closer inspection of the two fringes suggests that they cannot be the same piece. Charlotte’s tiara has many more spikes than Caroline’s necklace (by my count, the necklace has 25 large spikes; Charlotte’s tiara has many more). The necklace also has very distinctive spoon-shaped small spikes, while the tiara has simpler, tapered small spikes [4]. You can see the small spikes of the necklace circled in the image on the right.
So if the fringe necklace worn by Caroline isn’t her grandmother’s tiara russe, where did it come from? This is a question that still needs to be answered. The necklace has been included in exhibitions of Princess Grace’s clothing and jewels, and in the context of those exhibitions, it has apparently been labeled as one of Grace’s pieces of jewelry. But I’ve never been able to find photographic evidence of Grace wearing the fringe necklace [5]. Was the fringe necklace owned by Princess Charlotte? Did Princess Grace ever own or wear the piece? Is it not an heirloom at all — is it possibly a newer piece that Princess Caroline owns outright? Did she perhaps either purchase it or receive it as a gift at some point? Does Albert own the necklace now, with some sort of loan agreement with Caroline? We don’t really have answers to these questions at this point.
Ultimately, though, it seems we have at least two diamond fringes associated with the Grimaldi family on our hands. Charlotte’s tiara russe is one of the two fringes; it may or may not be the same tiara that Tatiana wore on Saturday. If it is the same piece, it’s undergone a makeover. The frame of the tiara would have to have been altered significantly to allow the piece to be worn atop Tatiana’s head, rather than in the bandeau style worn by Princess Charlotte. Such changes may also have affected the shape of the tiara, possibly accounting for the slight difference in angle. The other fringe is the necklace worn by Princess Caroline. We can say for certain that the tiara russe and the diamond fringe necklace, so long considered to be the same piece of jewelry, are actually two separate pieces. 
We also know that the tiara worn by Tatiana is most certainly not her mother-in-law’s necklace set on a frame. Tatiana’s tiara also lacks the spoon-shaped smaller spikes that the necklace has. So is Tatiana’s bridal tiara the same piece as Princess Charlotte’s tiara russe, worn again after almost a century hidden away? Maybe — but it’s also possible that Tatiana’s tiara isn’t Charlotte’s tiara russe at all. There’s certainly enough money flowing through the various branches of the Grimaldi, Casiraghi, and Santo Domingo families to acquire a new tiara for Tatiana. Until we get firm confirmation from reliable sources about the provenance of any of these three items, let the speculation continue!
NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped and enlarged version of a photograph available via Wikipedia; source here.
2. See this post for a connection between the fringe tiara and the Hamiltons.
3. Marie Amelie was from a rather jewel-rich family; her mother was Stephanie de Beauharnais, the adopted daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte.
4. Note that Ursula’s page on the tiara russe includes an image of Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara, owned by the British royal family (and worn by Elizabeth II on her wedding day), among the photographs of Charlotte wearing her fringe tiara. The two are not the same piece.
5. It should be noted, however, that the Cartier Pearl Drop Tiara, when exhibited, is generally also said to have been Grace’s. That tiara was Princess Charlotte’s, and today it is worn by Princess Caroline (though it reportedly belongs to her brother). Again, there’s never been any evidence that Grace ever wore that piece in public either, so categorizing the fringe necklace as one of Grace’s jewels may be a part of a larger trend of mislabeling items.
6. Cropped, enlarged, and altered low-quality version of photograph; original here. The excerpted portion of the image is being incorporated for the purpose of commentary, and as such, I believe its inclusion here adheres to the guidelines of fair use.