Princess Christina’s Napoleonic Nobel Tiara

Princess Christina, the youngest of the four sisters of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, attended the Nobels in 2006 with her husband, Tord Magnuson. Christina lost her royal status when she married Magnuson in 1974, but the couple have remained close to the royal family and have continued to represent Sweden at public events like the Nobel Prize ceremony and banquet over the years.

For the celebrations in 2006, Princess Christina wore a dark pink evening gown with a pink and gold lace jacket. She carried a gold clutch bag and wore the star and sash of the Order of the Seraphim.

Christina borrowed two important royal jewelry selections from the Bernadotte collection for the ceremony and banquet, both of which date to the early nineteenth century. The Napoleonic Cut Steel Tiara, one of the most unique jewels in the Swedish vaults, is made of highly-polished steel with gold accents. The tiara came to Sweden with the Leuchtenbergs. It’s said that it was originally made for Hortense de Beauharnais, Empress Josephine’s daughter.

Christina paired the tiara with the family’s fantastic suite of diamond and pink topaz jewels. These jewels are Russian in origin, given by Empress Maria Feodorovna to her daughter, Maria Pavlovna, to mark the birth of Maria Pavlovna’s daughter, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Princess Augusta’s granddaughter, Victoria of Baden, brought the topazes to Sweden in the 1880s.