The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Saturday Sparkler: The Nine Provinces Tiara

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Astrid of Belgium wears the Nine Provinces Tiara [1]
For a royal house that has reigned over a country for more than a century, the Belgian royal family has a surprisingly small number of tiaras in their vaults. There are several reasons for this — pieces have been sold, inherited by women who married into other families, etc. — but the family has managed to hang on to one of their sparkliest heirloom pieces: the Nine Provinces Tiara, which is worn by the nation’s queen.
Astrid of Belgium [2]

The tiara, which first belonged to Princess Astrid of Sweden, is approaching its ninetieth birthday. When Astrid married the future King Leopold III of Belgium, the sparkler was among her wedding presents. It was made in 1926 by Van Bever, a Belgian jeweler, and given to Astrid on behalf of the Belgian people. The original tiara was a meander bandeau topped by a series of diamonds on spikes. It was able to be worn with or without the top pieces from the start.

But Astrid innovated, adding a series of interlocking diamond arches over the top of the large diamonds, giving the entire tiara a far more solid appearance. Today, it is generally worn as a complete piece, although Queen Paola has worn the meander base of the tiara alone as a choker necklace. Additionally, the piece can be worn with the arches but without the diamond spikes, making it one of the most versatile royal tiaras in Belgian hands.

After Astrid’s death in 1935, her husband, King Leopold III, inherited the tiara. His second wife, Lilian, never wore the complete piece, though she did wear various components of the tiara, including using the meander section as a bracelet. But the tiara itself has only been worn by Belgian queens. When Fabiola de Mora y Aragón married Leopold and Astrid’s son, King Baudouin, in 1960, she received the piece, even wearing it on her wedding day.

When Baudouin died unexpectedly in 1993, the dowager queen passed the tiara to the new queen consort, Paola, who wore it until last year, when her husband abdicated in favor of their elder son. Today, the tiara is worn by Queen Mathilde, the first Belgian-born queen of the country. She posed in the tiara for her first official portrait as consort, although she chose to wear only the meander bandeau rather than the full version of the tiara. She’ll continue to have sole use of the tiara until the day that her elder daughter, Elisabeth, becomes queen. She’ll be the first ever queen regnant in Belgium should the monarchy survive to her accession [3].

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
2. Detail of Herman Richir’s Portrait de la Reine Astrid; source here.
3. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in June 2013.

This Week in Royal Jewels: January 17-22

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January 17-22, 2014
This week, I’m doing the royal jewel news roundup in a new format. Here are my choices for the top ten pieces of jewel news of the past week!
10. To welcome the Colombian president and first lady to Zarzuela Palace, Queen Sofia doubled up on necklaces, wearing both a golden pendant necklace and a longer golden chain. 
Princess Ingrid Alexandra [2]
9. The future queen of Norway, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, celebrated her tenth birthday this week. The new official portraits released by the royal court show the young princess wearing some delicate, age-appropriate jewels (and posing with a truly impressive bouquet of golden balloons!).
8. At Sotheby’s in London, an objet d’art from the collection of the late Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte of Luxembourg fetched more than 150,000 pounds at auction; a coral demi-parure that may also have belonged to her failed to sell.
7. The ladies over at Luxarazzi have also done some more detective work on the jewels of the Luxembourg collection; be sure to have a look at their research on an emerald bracelet that once belonged to Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mikhailovna!
6. Willem-Alexander and Máxima continued their introductory visits this week, traveling to Rome to meet with the Italian president. The queen wore jewels of gray pearls and diamonds for the event, including a striking brooch and a large bracelet. (And, of course, a hat that would make Peter Pan all kinds of envious.)
5. For a visit to King’s College Hospital, the Duchess of Cornwall donned a pair of clover brooches. She’s apparently a fan of paired brooches; she’s also been seen in a similar pair of turquoise flower brooches, as well as a pair of gorgeous pansy brooches.
4. Queen Elizabeth II satisfied the media by collecting flowers after church on Sunday; she also satisfied jewel watchers by wearing her Pearl Quatrefoil Brooch, which apparently arrived in her jewelry box some time in the 1980s. The monarch also celebrated another milestone this week: the birth of her fourth great-grandchild, Mia Grace Tindall.
3. For the second time in as many weeks, Queen Máxima wore a large diamond and aquamarine brooch, this time during a visit from French president Francois Hollande to the palace in The Hague. She wore the same brooch last week for a new year’s reception in Amsterdam.
2. Princess Beatrix chose diamond, amethyst, and pearl jewelry for a ballet gala in Amsterdam; the amethyst flower brooch is apparently a new piece for the former queen.
1. A rare blue diamond has been discovered in the same South African diamond mine that also yielded one of the most famous royal diamonds of all time: the Cullinan diamond. The blue diamond weighs nearly thirty carats — the Telegraph notes that it’s about the size of an acorn — and could be worth tens of millions of pounds. (It’s worth noting that the Telegraph article mistakenly states that the Cullinan was only cut into two stones, when nine major diamonds were yielded from the stone, along with numerous brilliants.)
NOTES, PHOTO SOURCES, AND LINKS

1. Banner image: detail of The Marriage of George, Duke of York to Princess Mary of Teck (1894) by Laurits Tuxen. Image in the public domain; source here.

2. Photo source: Sølve Sundsbø/the Norwegian Royal Court. Additional photographs are available here on the Norwegian royal family’s website.