The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

The Queen Mother’s Aquamarine Art Deco Brooch

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Today we’ve got a closer look at one of my favorite aquamarine brooches from Queen Elizabeth II’s extensive collection: the Queen Mother’s Aquamarine Art Deco Brooch.

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The brooch is set with diamonds and bright blue aquamarines. The design of the brooch suggests that it may be able to be separated and worn as a pair of clips, though the Queen has so far only worn it as a single piece.

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The brooch dates to at least the 1930s. Above, the Queen Mother wears the brooch during a visit from President Lebrun of France to Windsor Castle in March 1939.

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The brooch was inherited by the present Queen when her mother died in 2002, but she kept it back in her jewelry box for more than a decade. Her first public appearance in the brooch came in June 2014, when she wore it at Royal Ascot.

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Since then, she has made several appearances in the brooch, including this outing at a garden party at Buckingham Palace in June 2017.

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HM generally wears this piece horizontally, the same way her mother did, but on one occasion — a reception for military personnel at Buckingham Palace in November 2014 — she positioned the brooch vertically on her dress.

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The brooch’s place in the Queen’s jewelry box was really cemented in December 2015, when she wore it for one of the most visible jewelry moments of the calendar year: her annual Christmas Broadcast.

The Swedish Aquamarine Bandeau

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We’re kicking off March with a tiara that puts the month’s birthstone in the spotlight: the Swedish Aquamarine Bandeau.

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As the name of the tiara suggests, the piece resides in the Swedish royal vaults. It’s been there for at least two generations. Photographs show the present king’s sister, Princess Desiree, wearing the tiara in the 1960s, and it is now worn by his younger daughter, Princess Madeleine. It’s possible that the tiara’s history goes back even further: sources suggest that it once belonged to Queen Louise, the wife of Madeleine’s great-grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden.

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The design of the sparkler is incredibly simple — two slender, sleek rows of diamonds hugging a single, large pale-green aquamarine. If the tiara did indeed belong to Queen Louise, it’s plausible that the piece is from the Art Deco period, given its design.

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Madeleine received the aquamarine tiara as an eighteenth-birthday gift from her parents, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden. She wore it often in the years after she received it, including appearances at prominent Scandinavian royal weddings. Above, she wears the tiara for the wedding of Princess Martha Louise of Norway in 2002.

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And here, she wears the bandeau for the wedding of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark in 2004. Here, she pairs the tiara with the necklace version of the Modern Fringe Tiara (which she eventually wore for her own royal wedding, and which now belongs to her).

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Madeleine has experimented with the placement of the tiara throughout the years. For a state banquet held in Stockholm in honor of the President of China in June 2007, she positioned the tiara further back on her head, as you can see above.

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Like her sister’s birthday tiara, this was something of a starter piece, and Madeleine has since graduated mainly to larger and grander tiaras. She does, however, occasionally bring out the tiara at white-tie events. One of her most recent appearances came in February 2015, when she wore the tiara low across her forehead for a diplomatic gala in Stockholm.