The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Saturday Sparkler: Queen Sophie’s Diamond Tiara

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Queen Sophie of the Hellenes wears her diamond tiara [1]

For royal jewel lovers, there are few things better than the sudden, suprise reappearance of a jewel that has been hidden away from public view for decades. One of the biggest of these surprises was the reemergence of one of the most impressive diadems belonging to the former royal family of Greece: the diamond tiara of Queen Sophie of the Hellenes.

Queen Sophie [2]

The first owner of this large, intricate diamond tiara was Queen Sophie, who was born Princess Sophie of Prussia. She was the daughter of Princess Vicky, the first child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It’s not ever been revealed exactly how Sophie acquired the tiara or who made the piece, but many have guessed that she received it from one of her many royal relatives (possibly her mother or her brother) as a wedding present. Sophie married Crown Prince Constantine, the future king of Greece, in 1889.

The piece is an intriguing combination of modern and traditional styles. Many of the stones are large, rectangular diamonds. But those stones are nestled within more traditional floral designs, which are reminiscent of the ruby tiara owned by the Bernadottes and the sapphire tiara of Princess Elisabeth of Denmark. Sophie wore the tiara as a crown princess and as a queen. Sophie’s daughter, Princess Helen (who married the crown prince of Romania and gave birth to the country’s last king), was also photographed in the tiara; the portrait was taken by Bassano in 1934, two years after Sophie’s death [3]. In 1938, the tiara was given to Sophie’s daughter-in-law, Princess Friederike of Hanover, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick.

Friederike wore the tiara on her wedding day (along with the small nuptial crown of Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom, which had been won by the Hanoverians in a legal dispute with Queen Victoria). Friederike was the last Greek queen to wear the tiara in public. She did loan the piece once to another queen: Ingrid of Denmark, mother of Friederike’s daughter-in-law, Queen Anne-Marie. Ingrid borrowed the tiara during the centenary celebrations of the Greek royal family, an event that started with a state visit from Denmark. Here’s a video that shows Ingrid wearing the tiara; she appears at about the 4:40 mark.

After the Greek monarchy was deposed, the tiara vanished from public view for nearly half a century. Queen Friederike still owned the tiara when the family went into exile; although she gave other tiaras to Queen Anne-Marie, she kept this one in her own collection. Most jewel lovers assumed that the tiara had been sold either during the final years of Friederike’s life or after her death in 1981. Even so, there were persistent rumors that the family still had the piece.

Queen Sophie [4]

Those rumors were substantiated in spectacular fashion in 2012, when Marie-Chantal, the wife of Crown Prince Pavlos, appeared in Queen Sophie’s tiara at a banquet in honor of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s ruby jubilee. The enormous tiara nearly overpowered the diminutive princess, but no matter — the fact that the Greeks still had the piece was the main story of the evening. Why it hadn’t been worn for so long — and why Queen Anne-Marie of Greece has never worn it — still remains a mystery.

Some have speculated that Queen Friederike left the tiara directly to her grandson, Crown Prince Pavlos, just as Queen Ingrid of Denmark willed the ruby parure directly to Crown Prince Frederik. Others have wondered if the piece was inherited by someone else, possible Princess Irene, and was then subsequently acquired by the main branch of the family. Perhaps we’ll never know. All I know is that I am amazed that this piece is still in royal hands and grateful that we get to see it sparkle again after so much time!

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of a photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
2. Cropped version of a photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
3. See the National Portrait Gallery website for another pose from the same sitting.
4. Detail from Georgios Jakobides’s Portrait of Queen Sophia of Greece (1915); original here.

Birthday Jewels: Crown Princess Mary of Denmark

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Crown Princess Mary of Denmark [1]
Today, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark celebrates her forty-second birthday. The Tasmanian-born princess has embraced the world of royal jewelry enthusiastically since joining the Danish royal family in 2004, and today, she wears a number of heirloom pieces from the family collection. To celebrate her birthday, we’re going to look at a small piece of jewelry that packs a major sentimental punch: her sapphire, diamond, and pearl brooch.
Mary’s sapphire, diamond, and pearl brooch [2]
The brooch features a large faceted sapphire surrounded by diamonds. Swags of pearls are suspended from the main element of the brooch, as is a floral diamond and pearl drop. The brooch can be traced back five generations in the family, back to Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. She married the Duke of Connaught (one of Queen Victoria’s sons) in 1879. Among her wedding presents was a sapphire and diamond brooch, given to her by Colonel Stannerly [3]. The Washington Post describes the jewel as “a breastpin, with a sapphire set in diamonds” [4].
Queen Margrethe II [5]
Louise’s brooch was inherited by her daughter, Princess Margaret of Connaught, who took it with her when she married the future King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden. At some point the brooch was apparently reset, taking on its current appearance; that would account for the pearls, which must have been part of a later addition to the piece. Precisely who had the jewel remodeled isn’t clear. But it is clear that the sapphire brooch is one of the jewels that Margaret’s only daughter, Ingrid, inherited and took with her to Denmark.
Here the history of the brooch becomes clearer. Ingrid generally reserved the brooch for important occasions within the family. She wore it during the engagement celebrations for her eldest daughter, Queen Margrethe II, and Count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat. Eventually, Ingrid bequeathed the brooch to Margrethe, though the queen also wore the sapphire brooch during Ingrid’s lifetime, specifically at the christening of her first grandson, Prince Nikolai, in November 1999 (see the photograph on the left).
In 2006, Margrethe gifted the sapphire, diamond, and pearl brooch to Crown Princess Mary. It was a present to mark the birth of Mary’s eldest child, Prince Christian of Denmark. Mary wore the brooch in public for the first time at Christian’s baptism, which was held on 21 January 2006. Since then, she has also worn the same brooch at the christenings of her two youngest children, twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine (in April 2011). The brooch isn’t the only wardrobe element that Mary has repeated for her children’s christenings; Mary has also worn the same ivory floral headpiece at each of the them, including Princess Isabella’s christening in 2007.
Crown Princess Mary and Prince Christian [6]
While discussing the sapphire brooch during her interviews for De Kongelige Juveler, a wonderful documentary on royal jewels, Mary noted, “Some people learn history through wars or famous people, but jewelry is just as good a possibility to learn history. It shows how the families have married through the generations. And it doesn’t only talk about lineage, but it also relates to personal events in families. For example, we know that this brooch has always been worn for family-related events. Except that now I have it, and I tend to wear it a little bit more generally” [7].
NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped still from a YouTube video; source here.
2. Cropped still from a YouTube video; source here.
3. It’s not clear exactly who this is referencing. Elsewhere in the Post list of Louise’s wedding gifts, a Colonel “Stanley” offers two antique silver bowls; that Col. Stanley is almost certainly the 16th Earl of Derby (the Governor General of Canada for whom the Stanley Cup is named). It seems unlikely that the brooch came from him, as the two gifts are separated by a number of other entries on the list. If anyone can identify this “Colonel Stannerly,” please let us know in the comments!
4. Published in the Washington Post on 14 Mar 1879. Ursula also includes a list of wedding gifts here.
5. Cropped still from a YouTube video; source here.
6. Cropped still from a YouTube video; source here.
7. You can view the first episode of the documentary here.

Margaret of Connaught’s Khedive Tiara

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Crown Princess Margareta, ca. 1908 [1]
Margaret of Connaught had a number of tiaras at her disposal during her tenure as crown princess of Sweden, but none of the others are quite as romantic and sentimental as today’s piece: the Cartier tiara given to her as a wedding gift by the Khedive of Egypt.
Margaret of Connaught [2]

The Khedive tiara’s story begins even before the piece’s creation. Margaret, the niece of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, was on a royal tour with her parents, who wanted to marry their daughters off to suitable royal spouses. They had their eye on the future king of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf, as a prospective partner for Margaret’s sister, Princess Patricia. They rendezvous-ed with Gustaf Adolf in Cairo, where he immediately fell in love — but with the wrong sister. It didn’t matter, in the end; Margaret was in love with him, too. Gustaf Adolf proposed to her during a dinner at the British consulate in Cairo, and the two were married at Windsor in 1905.

As the young couple had met in his country, it was important that the Khedive of Egypt — the governor of the country, which was ruled by the British at the time — give them a suitable wedding present. He commissioned Cartier to make this tiara for the occasion. The piece, which has alternately been described as a scroll tiara and as a tiara featuring marguerite motifs, bears considerable similarity to another piece made for the Egyptians at roughly the same time: Princess Shwikar’s tiara. That piece has never been firmly attributed to Cartier, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the same jeweler was behind both sparklers.

Margaret wore the piece during her time as Sweden’s crown princess, both as a tiara and as a dress ornament. You can see her wearing the Khedive on the bodice of her dress in the portrait shown at left above (where she wears the diamond tiara given to her by her parents as a diadem). The way that Margaret has positioned the piece in the portrait fits with its depiction in the illustrated guide to her wedding gifts (see below). When worn as a tiara, the piece is flipped so that the scroll elements are at the base.

Illustration of the tiara/ornament from Margaret of Connaught’s wedding gifts [3]
Unfortunately, Margaret had little time to experiment with her tiara collection. When she died in 1920, this tiara was one of the jewels that was inherited by her only daughter, Princess Ingrid. She brought the tiara with her to Denmark when she married Crown Prince Frederik (later Frederik IX) in 1935. Ingrid didn’t wear this piece on her wedding day [4], but it was through her influence that it has become the official wedding tiara for all of her female descendants in the years since.

Ingrid of Denmark [5]

So far, the bridal wearers of the Khedive have been Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (see here); Princess Benedikte of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (see here); Benedikte’s two daughters, Princess Alexandra (here) and Princess Nathalie (here); Queen Anne-Marie of Greece (see here); and her elder daughter, Princess Alexia (here). Anne-Marie’s younger daughter, Princess Theodora, will also be eligible to wear the tiara if she marries. After Ingrid’s death in 2000, she left the tiara to her younger daughter, Anne-Marie, the former queen of Greece. Anne-Marie has had alterations made to the base of the piece [6], so that it sits much higher now on the wearer’s head (you can clearly see these changes in wedding photos of Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, the only bride to have worn it so far after it was altered).

It will be extremely interesting to see what happens to the Khedive tiara in the next generation. Will Anne-Marie leave it to one of her daughters, who are no longer princesses of a reigning monarchy? Will it be returned to the Danes, to preserve it officially as a wedding tiara for the next generation of royal brides? (That will include three Danish princesses — Isabella, Josephine, and Athena — as well as the granddaughters of Benedikte and Anne-Marie.) Cases like the Khedive, which has both historical and familial importance, make me wish that Ingrid had followed the example of Juliana of the Netherlands and set up a foundation for her jewelry. But for now, only time will tell [7].

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of photograph in the public domain; source here. (The Grand Ladies website suggests that the photograph may have been made to advertise Margaret to potential grooms, but if the photo really was taken in 1908, that’s not possible.)
2. Portrait of Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden by Axel Jungstedt, ca. 1909; source here.
3. Detail of the illustrated newspaper guide to Margaret’s wedding gifts; a full version of the image available here.
4. Here’s an image of Frederik and Ingrid on their wedding day in 1935. While neither Margaret nor Ingrid wore the Khedive as a bridal tiara, they both wore the same Irish lace veil that Margaret had been given as a wedding gift. All of Ingrid’s female descendants, plus Crown Princess Mary, have also worn the veil on their wedding days. In a bit of morbid trivia, the same veil covered Margaret of Connaught’s body in her coffin, though the veil was removed before the coffin was closed so that it could be given to Ingrid.
5. Cropped version of photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
6. See the tiara’s new base here.
7. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in February 2013.