After a post on Queen Mary’s jewelry innovations, it’s only fair to let all of you have another crack at re-imagining a piece of royal jewelry! If you could rework the emerald art deco tiara from the Luxembourg collection, set in platinum by Chaumet and featuring an enormous cabochon emerald stone, what changes would you make?
Jewel History: Her Majesty Has Diamonds Reset (1911)
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“Her Majesty Has Diamonds Reset”
(originally appeared in The Washington Post, 6 Aug 1911)
Queen Mary has lately sent some of her wonderful collection of diamonds to be reset, and this serves to confirm what was said at the time of the coronation — that these are Her Majesty’s favorite gems. Though she possesses some very valuable rubies, emeralds, and pearls, she rarely wears them, and as a rule diamonds form her sole ornament.
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Queen Alexandra, on the other hand, greatly prefers to have her diamonds mixed with other stones, particularly emeralds and amethysts. Emeralds are the favorite stones of the Duchess of Connaught, while her daughter, Princess Patricia, confessed to a preference for turquoises.
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The latter, by the way, is a favorite gem with other members of the royal family, including the Princess Royal and the Duchess of Argyll, while pearls appeal to the Princess Victoria in particular.
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It has been computed, by the way, that Queen Mary must possess no fewer than 43 diamond coronets and tiaras, most of which she has appeared in during the last season.
Princess Anne’s Diamond Festoon Necklace
Get excited, everyone — we have a new Magpie of the Month! The Princess Royal gets a lot of flack for keeping the same hairstyle since the ’70s and wearing decades-old clothes, but her jewelry collection often doesn’t get enough attention at all. The daughter of a reigning queen, Anne has inherited jewels from the British royal family as well as from her father’s Greek and German royal relatives. Today’s piece is a gift from her parents: her diamond festoon necklace.
According to Leslie Field, this necklace was an eighteenth birthday present to Anne from her parents, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. Field describes the necklace as “an antique diamond festoon necklace with ribbons and bows, and pendant drops.” Some have suggested in the past that the necklace was remade from one that belonged to Queen Alexandra; however, most sources state that Elizabeth and Philip purchased the necklace themselves.
Along with the necklace, Field states that Anne received a coordinating pair of diamond pendant earrings from her parents.
Anne often pairs the necklace and earrings with the diamond festoon tiara that she received as a gift from the World Wide Shipping Group. (We talked more about that tiara here!) Along with wearing the tiara, necklace, and earrings together for various state events, Anne wore them in her engagement portraits. She also wore the necklace and earrings with a diamond floral brooch in her 60th birthday portraits (see here and here.)
And the earrings have also had one more very significant outing: Anne’s daughter, Zara, wore them on her wedding day in 2011 (along with a tiara that had belonged to Prince Philip’s mother, Alice of Battenberg).