State Visit Jewels: Guildhall Banquet

On Wednesday evening, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester represented the
royal family at the Guildhall banquet held for President Tan of
Singapore.

Birgitte wore a number of her most glittering heirloom jewels for the occasion. Her tiara is the all-diamond version of Queen Mary’s Honeysuckle Tiara, made in 1913 by E. Wolff and Co. for Garrard. (See much more about the tiara here.) The diamond earrings are the same pair that she often wears to white-tie occasions. Her diamond collet necklace was a wedding gift from Queen Mary to Princess Alice, the previous Duchess of Gloucester, in 1935.

Birgitte often wears brooches attached to the collet necklace as pendants, but this pendant isn’t familiar to me, and I can’t find a reference to it in my notes. The design looks fairly modern, possibly studded with emeralds and rubies? She’s also wearing a large brooch attached to the sash of the Royal Victorian Order, plus Elizabeth II’s family order.

And as an update to yesterday’s post on the jewels from the state banquet, we finally have a rather blurry look at the tiara that Birgitte wore there: the Cartier Indian Tiara, a piece that once belonged to Princess Marie Louise, granddaughter of Queen Victoria and godmother to the present Duke of Gloucester.