The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Saturday Sparkler: The Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik

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The jewel collection of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (the Elder) of Russia — better known to many as Grand Duchess Vladimir — was the royal gift that just seemed to keep on giving in the wake of the Russian Revolution. But although some of her tiaras, including the famous Vladimir Tiara, were sold off after the family had gone into exile, this sapphire kokoshnik was the tiara that MP the Elder used to buy her way out of Russia as many of her family members were being murdered by the Bolsheviks. The buyers weren’t just jewel collectors — they were the Romanian royal family.

Quick backstory: when the political situation in Romania became precarious during World War I, Queen Marie of Romania’s jewels, along with an incredible number of treasures and valuables from the country, were sent to Moscow for safekeeping. Marie had important ties to the Romanovs: her mother was Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia before she married Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s son Alfred. She wasn’t the only one who sent her jewels to Russia thinking they’d be safe there: members of the grand ducal family of Hesse did as well. (The tsarina was, after all, born a Hessian princess.)

Marie wearing the now-lost Massin tiara before the war [source]

And that’s where things went sour. We all know what happened in to the Romanovs after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The change of government in Russia meant that the Romanian royal jewels were in peril, too. During the war, the Romanians invaded territory held by Russia, the Soviets cut off all diplomatic ties, and the treasures were stranded. Some of the valuables have been returned over time, but many pieces, including Marie’s jewels, were never been repatriated to Romania. Marie was understandably very upset about the loss of her jewels, many of which she had received from her Russian mother. The tiara she received as a wedding gift from her parents was gone; so was the magnificent Massin tiara that had been in the family for a generation. To help rebuild her collection, Marie’s husband, King Ferdinand, gave his wife money to purchase new jewels to replace the ones that had been lost.

Maria Pavlovna wears the tiara [source]

But unlike most of us, Marie didn’t have to go to a jewelry store to find a new tiara. Instead, she had merely to look to the collection of her aunt, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, for a new diadem. The one she purchased was this sapphire and diamond kokshnik tiara, which was made for MP the Elder in 1909 by Cartier. The largest central sapphire, a cushion-cut gem weighing more than 137 carats (!), had been previously set in a brooch. The other sapphires, which were smaller cabochons, were nineteenth-century Romanov heirlooms; they had originally belonged to Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, the wife of Tsar Nicholas I.

The tiara was one of the more extravagant pieces in a truly remarkable collection, but when the revolution happened, the need to escape from Russia was greater than the need to retain the diadem. Maria Pavlovna sold the tiara to her niece, the queen of Romania, in 1917. Maria Pavlovna used the money to buy her passage out of Russia and into exile; Marie of Romania used the tiara as the cornerstone of her replacement collection. Her husband later purchased an astonishing sapphire pendant from Cartier as a coordinating piece.

Queen Marie’s tiara was an important part of her new collection; she underscored this when she chose to wear the tiara when she was painted by Philip de László in 1924. But there came a time when she decided to hand it along to the next generation. She passed the tiara on to her daughter, Princess Ileana, when she married an Austrian archduke in 1931. Four years later, Ileana actually lent the tiara back to her mother to wear for the Silver Jubilee of King George V of the United Kingdom. At that point, political tensions were already strong in Romania, so Marie left the tiara in her London bank for safekeeping, probably mindful of what had happened to her wedding jewels. Ileana was only able to reclaim the tiara shortly before the outbreak of World War II.

Marie wears the kokoshnik [source]

After the war was over, the monarchy in Romania was pretty much over, too. The young King Michael I was forced to abdicate in 1947, and the royal family went into exile. Ileana ended up in the United States, and initially, she took the sapphire tiara with her. The princess’s autobiography includes fascinating descriptions of the tiara and her journey with it from country to country. Ultimately, though, she also decided to part with the piece. In the early 1950s, she sold the tiara back to its original maker, Cartier. She used the funds she received for more practical purposes: to put a down payment on a new home and to pay the travel costs that enabled her to bring her children to America.

Queen Marie of Romania’s Sapphire Pendant

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Yesterday on the blog I featured a film clip from Queen Friederike of Greece’s 1964 visit to New York. In the film, she wears the magnificent diamond tiara that belonged to Queen Sophie, along with a necklace featuring a stunning pendant: an enormous 478-carat sapphire that came from the collection of Queen Marie of Romania. How did this gemstone, one of the largest sapphires in the world, get from Romania to Greece? Read on…

The first records of the sapphire’s existence place it in Cartier’s workshop in Paris around 1913. It was originally set in a sautoir necklace with a number of other sapphires; however, the firm changed the design of the piece to showcase the sapphire as a single pendant on a diamond and platinum necklace. That version of the necklace was put on exhibit in 1919 in San Sebastian, Spain. Hans Nadelhoffer’s book on Cartier notes that the necklace was the showstopper piece of the jeweler’s autumn show that year, and viewers included Queen Ena of Spain and her mother-in-law, Queen Maria Cristina. According to Nadelhoffer, Ena even tried the necklace on, possibly hoping that her husband, King Alfonso, would purchase it for her. (No dice, unfortunately: Alfonso said no.)

Instead, a different monarch ended up buying the necklace: King Ferdinand of Romania. He purchased the necklace in 1921 on an installment plan, paying around 1,375,000 francs in total. (And remember, that’s at a 1920s rate.) Ferdinand was married to the glamorous and dramatic Queen Marie, daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (a son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) and his Romanov wife, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. Marie had lost many of her jewels in Russia during the war, and she and Ferdinand were on a mission to replenish her jewelry box.

Ferdinand had succeeded to the Romanian throne in 1914, but his reign had been quickly disrupted by World War I. In 1922, the year after he bought the sapphire, he and Marie were finally crowned. For the October coronation, Marie wore the diamond sautoir with the enormous sapphire pendant. Two years later, she paired the necklace with a diamond and sapphire tiara that she had purchased from one of her Romanov relatives, the famous Grand Duchess Vladimir, for a portrait sitting with Philip de Laszlo.

Even after the end of the war, though, Romanian politics were complex. Ferdinand died in 1927, and his son, Carol, began a tumultuous reign marked by scandal, abdication, and eventual exile. By 1947, Carol’s only son, Michael, was on the throne; he was compelled to abdicate by the government. With the family in increasingly dire straits, the sapphire pendant was sold. The buyer was another major name in jewelry: Harry Winston. (The family actually kept the diamond portion of the necklace for a bit longer. It was worn in 1948 by Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma at her wedding to King Michael, which you can see in the footage above. It’s since been broken up.)

The royal story of the sapphire pendant could have ended there — but it didn’t. Vincent Meylan writes in The Queen’s Jewels that Harry Winston sold the sapphire pendant to a wealthy Greek citizen, who in turn presented it to his nation’s queen consort: Friederike, the wife of King Paul. Friederike suspended the sapphire from a pearl and diamond necklace. You can see a glimpse of the sapphire on Friederike in the photograph above, taken at a banquet at Claridge’s in London in 1963.

Friederike took the sapphire with her during her 1964 trip to New York. She also wore the piece that September during the wedding festivities for her only son, King Constantine II, and Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark.

She also wore the sapphire at the wedding of Prince Michael of Greece in 1965. But then, the whereabouts of the sapphire become a bit murky. The Greek monarchy was abolished for good in the 1970s, and the family went into exile. Queen Friederike ended up in Spain, where her daughter, Sofia, was queen, while the king and his family relocated to England. The sapphire popped again in public in November 2003, when it was put up for auction at Christie’s in Geneva. In the auction notes, the lot was offered for sale by “a noble family.”

There are basically two ways to interpret that sale note. One is that the Greek royals quietly disposed of the sapphire pendant some time after Queen Friederike’s death, and the piece was purchased by a noble family, who then decided to sell the piece in a public auction. But it’s also entirely possible that these “nobles” were indeed the former Greek royals themselves. It’s pretty common for royals to present items for auction under slightly pseudonymous conditions. There’s a fine line to be trodden: items that have established royal provenance and links to current royal owners sell for higher prices at auction, but selling royal jewelry can lead to some backlash, especially when a piece was a gift from a generous countryman. (For an example, see the excellent work of my friends over at Luxarazzi on the announced sale, then the cancellation of the sale, and then ultimately eventual auction of many of the jewels of the late Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte of Luxembourg.)

Photo used with the kind permission of thoughtful reader Nancy, who visited the Cartier exhibition. She retains the copyright; do not reproduce.

Queen Marie and Queen Friederike’s sapphire pendant was the largest sapphire ever offered at auction when it was sold. When the gavel fell, the jewel had fetched more than $1.4 million. It’s owned privately today, but last year, the sapphire went on display as a part of the Cartier: Style and History exhibition in Paris. Nearly a hundred years after it sparkled in Spain at Cartier’s autumn show, the sapphire pendant dazzled public viewers all over again.