The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

This Week in Royal Jewels: January 31-February 6

by // Leave a Comment

January 31-February 6, 2014
As the royals begin to start amping up their engagements following the holidays, here are ten of the sparkliest royal stories of the week!
10. Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, who celebrated her birthday this week, wore a distinctive gold and pale pink pendant necklace to present awards to Danish scientists on Thursday in Copenhagen.
9. Queen Mathilde of the Belgians chose pearls and diamonds for the first day of an official visit to President Hollande in Paris.
8. At a concert held to give thanks for the years of service of Princess Beatrix to the Dutch people, Princess Carolina of Bourbon-Parma wore an impressive statement necklace; the event also served as an announcement of her pregnancy. (There’s a mini baby boom happening in the Dutch branch of the Bourbon-Parma family; Princess Viktoria, the wife of Prince Jaime, is also expecting.)
7. Shortly after stories circulated that Queen Elizabeth II had ordered the Duchess of Cambridge to wear more heirloom jewelry, the palace announced that the two will attend a reception for the dramatic arts at Buckingham Palace on February 17. Other members of the royal family (not yet announced) will also be in attendance.
6. There’s been some serious jewel detective work happening over at Luxarazzi. They’ve determined that nearly all of the pieces from the controversial cancelled auction of Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte’s jewels were sold anonymously in later auctions — some for only a few euros a piece. See their discussion of auctions from 2007, 2008, and 2009 for more.
5. Tiara lovers in New York City recently had the rare opportunity to see one of the diadems designed by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria in person. Her sapphire and diamond tiara was displayed at the annual Winter Antiques Show as a part of a special exhibit.
4. Queen Sofia chose a piece from her family’s archives — a pearl necklace with a diamond and cabochon ruby pendant — for a diplomatic reception in Madrid. She inherited the pendant from her mother, Queen Friederike of the Hellenes.
3. At a church service in King’s Lynn, Queen Elizabeth II debuted the diamond and tourmaline brooch presented to her last year by the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan.
2. For the concert celebrating her mother-in-law, Queen Maxima wore for the first time the large sapphire and diamond bow brooch made for Queen Wilhelmina. See John’s excellent site about the Dutch royal jewels for much more information about the piece.
1. Shocking royal watchers all over the world, Tatiana Santo Domingo wore a diamond fringe tiara to marry Andrea Casiraghi, the elder son of Princess Caroline of Monaco, in a Catholic ceremony in Gstaad. You can read more about the diamond fringes worn by Grimaldi princesses here.

More Royal Jewels for Kate?

by // Leave a Comment

The Duchess of Cambridge on a visit to Malaysia in 2012 [1]
This week, a story published in the Mail on Sunday trumpeted that the Duchess of Cambridge was undergoing a royally-sanctioned makeover ahead of her upcoming tour of Australia and New Zealand. As is generally true with stories about Kate’s clothing, the piece quickly gained traction and was picked up by other press outlets, including Vanity Fair.

The Duchess of Cambridge [2]

Playing on the long-established tabloid trope that Queen Elizabeth II is unhappy with her granddaughter-in-law’s appearance, the story crowed that the monarch had ordered longer hemlines and more jewelry for Kate for the Aussie tour. Conveniently, that also gave the paper a chance yet again to publish photos of the duchess’s skirt flying up at inopportune moments — just to illustrate the story, I’m sure. It also gave their royal correspondent, Katie Nicholl, yet another chance to suggest that Kate’s clothes are too short, too tight, not royal enough, just plain wrong, etc., etc.

I’m not going to get into a debate here about Kate’s clothing and whether or not it’s right for a royal woman to wear — this isn’t a fashion blog, after all. But I will say that I’m pretty sure that a woman who is the monarch of sixteen countries probably doesn’t have lots of spare time to bust out a ruler and measure Kate’s skirts like she’s a high school student violating the dress code. Anyway. The part of Nicholl’s article that’s more pertinent to us is this bit:

Those jewels from the Delhi Durbar Parure – a collection of Indian gems gifted to the Royals in 1911 – had been passed from Royal hand to Royal hand by Queen Mary to The Queen Mother and then to the Queen who gave them to Diana as a wedding gift. They are also, appropriately, known as the Cambridge emeralds. Now, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the Duchess of Cambridge – who wears her late mother-in-law’s sapphire engagement ring – will be packing precisely these kinds of jewels in April when she sets out in the footsteps of Diana on a tour Down Under.

Diana, Princess of Wales [3]

Because this story is from the Mail on Sunday, you knew already that there would be Diana comparisons involved. Here they’re made in terms of jewelry, especially that famous emerald choker that Diana wore as a bandeau in the 1980s (see the image at left). Although Kate has already worn some of the heirloom pieces from the Windsor collection — we talked about those here — Nicholl argues that Kate’s been told to pull a Diana and wear more jewels. She says that Kate “will be encouraged to wear the tiaras favoured by the Queen and Queen Mother.”

The main problem here is not the idea that Kate should wear more jewelry — goodness knows that I’m always in favor of people wearing more jewelry! It’s that the wrong royal is being used for the comparison. Although the media loves to make comparisons between Diana and her daughter-in-law, she’s not the example we should be following to try to predict what Kate will wear in 2014. Rather than looking to the tour wardrobe of the late Diana, Princess of Wales to try to decide what jewelry Kate might wear on a present-day tour, we should all be focusing instead on the jewels worn abroad by the Duchess of Cornwall.

As much as we all love tiaras, and while Diana and Fergie both wore them during royal tours in the 1980s, Camilla doesn’t wear them to dinners during royal tours today. (In fact, I think she’s only ever worn a tiara abroad twice: at the inauguration of Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, and at a banquet in Uganda in 2007 where the queen was also present.) If the wife of the heir isn’t wearing tiaras while on royal tours, I’m afraid we probably can’t expect the wife of the heir’s heir to wear them, either. Even if there are dinners involved with the tour this April, I think we can expect Kate’s attire to be more suited for a less formal black-tie event than for a white-tie event where tiaras are worn.

Dressing the Queen [3]

Nicholl also says that Angela Kelly, the woman in charge of the daily upkeep to Elizabeth II’s jewelry, has been asked to step in and select Kate’s jewels for the tour. Kelly is one of the most trusted members of the queen’s staff, and she wrote a delightful book, Dressing the Queen: The Jubilee Wardrobe, that details exactly how much planning goes into prepping the queen’s wardrobe. She’s clearly a busy woman — one whose duties this spring will include preparing Elizabeth II for a state visit to France in June to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day and a visit to Italy and the Vatican that will coincide with William and Kate’s oceanic tour in April. Coordinating the wardrobe of the head of state for such important occasions as a somber military anniversary and a first meeting with a fellow head of state, Pope Francis, will take up a considerable amount of Kelly’s time.

Kelly’s involvement here would seem too good to be true — and indeed, according to Judy Wade of Hello!, apparently it is:

I’d imagine that we’ll see Kate wearing jewelry in Australia and New Zealand much the same way that she did for her Canadian and South Seas tours: her usual low-key pieces, possibly mixed in with the occasional small royal heirloom piece. Of all of Nicholl’s claims, I’d say that her suggestion that Kate might borrow a brooch from HM for the tour could be the closest to fact, as Kate borrowed a brooch and a pair of earrings from the queen for the 2011 tour. Nicholl suggests either the Queen Mum’s ruby hibiscus brooch or Elizabeth II’s own golden wattle brooch as good candidates. But in terms of tiaras or jewels at the level of Diana’s Cambridge emeralds for this tour? Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath!

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped still from a YouTube video; source here.
2. Photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
3. Cropped and edited still from a YouTube video; source here.
4. Promotional book cover image via Amazon; source here.

The Fife Tiara

by // Leave a Comment

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.