The Pearl Poire Tiara

Denmark is perhaps one of the most tiara-rich countries in Europe, but even among their large cache of sparklers, a few tiaras stand out as particularly historically important. One of these, the Pearl Poiré Tiara, highlights the maternal heritage of the country’s monarch.

The tiara, which is made of diamonds set with eighteen pear-shaped (or “poiré”) pendant pearls, is thought to have been made in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his book on Denmark’s royal jewels, Bjarne Steen Jensen notes that the tiara was a wedding gift in 1825 to Princess Louise of Prussia on her marriage to Prince Frederick of the Netherlands. Louise was the daughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, which has led many to presume that the tiara was made in present-day Germany, most likely in Berlin. The tiara was accompanied by a diamond brooch with five pearl pendants.

Intriguingly, Princess Louise’s pearl tiara and brooch set also had a twin. Louise’s brother, Prince Albrecht, married Princess Marianne of the Netherlands in 1830, and King Friedrich Wilhelm gave his new daughter-in-law another diamond tiara set with pendant pearls. According to Jensen, Marianne’s pearl tiara was inherited by her daughter, Princess Alexandrine, who married Duke Wilhelm of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Alexandrine’s daughter, Charlotte, is the last known owner of the twin tiara; its whereabouts today are apparently a mystery.

But we know what happened to Louise’s tiara: it ended up in Denmark, and we can easily trace its path from The Hague to Copenhagen. In 1849, Prince Frederick and Princess Louise helped to arrange a marriage between their eldest daughter, Princess Louise, and Crown Prince Charles of Sweden. It wasn’t a happy marriage. Louise was very much in love with Charles, but he reportedly didn’t find her attractive and treated her with disdain and neglect. But in 1859, when his father died, the couple became King Charles XV and Queen Louise of Sweden and Norway. They managed to have two children, but only one, Princess Lovisa, lived to adulthood.

Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, Princess Louise became ill. In late 1870, Queen Louise traveled to be with her mother on her deathbed. Princess Louise died in December, and in her will, she left the Pearl Poiré Tiara to Queen Louise. But a bit of very bad timing intervened. Queen Louise made her way back to Stockholm, but not long after she returned, she caught pneumonia. Before the contents of her mother’s estate could be distributed, Queen Louise died, too. She never got to wear the pearl tiara, but she does appear to be wearing the matching brooch from her mother’s collection in the portrait above.

Appropriately, the tiara was subsequently given to Queen Louise’s only daughter, Princess Lovisa. Even though Lovisa was the only living child of King Charles XV, the constitution in Sweden at the time prevented her from inheriting her father’s throne. Instead, she had agreed in 1869 to a marriage with Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. The tiara traveled with Crown Princess Lovisa to Copenhagen, and it has been in Danish hands ever since.

Frederik and Lovisa became Denmark’s king and queen in 1906. In Lovisa’s hands, the tiara became a part of a married parure, matched up with other similar pieces of pearl and diamond jewelry to make a set. A large diamond brooch with five pearl pendants had been made to match the tiara at the time of its original creation, and Lovisa inherited the brooch along with the tiara. She began wearing both pieces with a pearl and diamond necklace that she had received as a wedding gift from the Khedive of Egypt.

Two pearl pendants that were originally part of that necklace were also later turned into earrings. One more piece was also added to this “parure”–a pearl and diamond cluster brooch, which was originally the clasp of an elaborate pearl necklace. This necklace had been Lovisa’s wedding gift from Tsar Alexander III of Russia and his wife, Maria Feodorovna (born Princess Dagmar of Denmark; she was a sister of Lovisa’s husband, Frederik).

In her will, Lovisa placed this entire group of pearl and diamond jewels in the Danish Royal Property Trust, ensuring that the set could never be broken up. Although the suite is not a part of the Danish crown jewels, it passes directly from monarch to monarch, and it is generally worn only by the country’s queen. All of Lovisa’s successors–Queen Alexandrine, Queen Ingrid, Queen Margrethe II, and Queen Mary–have worn the Pearl Poiré Tiara and the accompanying pearl and diamond jewels. Above, Queen Alexandrine wears the parure during the wedding celebrations for her son, Crown Prince Frederik, and Princess Ingrid of Sweden in 1935.

And here, in 1953, Queen Ingrid wears the pearl tiara, necklace, earrings, and brooch in Norway for the wedding of Prince Ragnhild.

On two separate occasions, though, the tiara has been worn by a member of the royal family acting as a representative of the monarch. In 1937, Crown Princess Ingrid borrowed the tiara from her mother-in-law for the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom. For the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Denmark was represented by Prince Axel and Princess Margaretha; she also borrowed and wore the pearl tiara.

The Pearl Tiara and its accompanying parure were the first gala jewels worn by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark after her accession in January 1972. She wore the jewels for her first official portraits. An image from that portrait session is shown above.

In 1973, she wore the pearl tiara and jewels for the first state banquet of her reign. The event took place during a state visit hosted by her grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.

During her reign, Margrethe wore the tiara often for prominent events like state visits or the annual New Year’s Levees. In 2015, she selected the tiara for a very appropriate event: a banquet in honor of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands. The tiara was a bejeweled reminder of the monarchs’ shared family heritage, dating all the way back to its first owner, Princess Louise of the Netherlands.

In September 2022, Margrethe chose to wear the pearls for the banquet celebrating a very important milestone: her Golden Jubilee, marking 50 years on the Danish throne.

And a little over a year later, she chose the Pearl Poire Tiara and the jewels from the married parure for the final gala event before her abdication: the New Year’s Levee on January 1 at Amalienborg. The appearance offered a neat bookend to the tiara moments of her reign.

In May 2024, the tiara was seen on a new wearer for the first time in more than half a century. Queen Mary, the wife of King Frederik X of Denmark, chose to wear the tiara and earrings from the parure, plus the diamond and pearl cluster brooch, for a state banquet in Norway. The event took place on a particularly special evening: Frederik and Mary’s 20th wedding anniversary.