Has Queen Mary’s Missing Diamond Lozenge Bandeau Been Found?

For years, one of Britain’s biggest jewelry mysteries has been the fate of this diamond bandeau, worn by both Queen Mary and Princess Margaret. Now, a royal lady from across the globe believes that she can solve it.

Queen Mary’s tiara collection was extensive, including enormous diadems and small bandeaux. She liked to wear her smaller tiaras for evenings out at the theater–visits to see plays, ballets, and movies at the cinema. This collection included the lacy diamond bandeau later added to the collection of the Duchess of Kent, the petite diamond bandeau later worn as a bridal tiara by the Duchess of Sussex, and this diamond and pearl bandeau, with its distinctive lozenge pattern. Here, Mary wears the tiara at Sadler’s Wells Theater for a performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Princess in April 1939. At this point, the tiara was topped by a series of thirteen round pearls.

Those pearl toppers were apparently removable, and going forward, the bandeau was worn without them. Here, after the war, Mary wears the lozenge bandeau at the Odeon Marble Arch in October 1946. The occasion was the premiere of the film The Magic Bow, which starred Stewart Granger as the violinist Niccolò Paganini.

Two years later, the small tiara appeared on a second wearer. Princess Margaret, Mary’s granddaughter, wore the tiara in Amsterdam in September 1948. She was there representing the royal family at the inauguration of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. It was one of her first official trips, as well as one of her very first public tiara appearances.

Here’s another view of the young princess wearing the tiara at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam during the inauguration festivities. It’s not clear exactly what sort of transaction may have placed the tiara in Margaret’s hands. It’s possible that it was given to her by her grandmother, or perhaps offered as a loan. For the next two decades, though, Margaret appears to have been the exclusive wearer of the tiara, even after Mary’s death in 1953.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Margaret occasionally brought the tiara out for occasions like state banquets and foreign trips. Here, she wears the bandeau for the return dinner during Queen Juliana’s state visit to Britain in 1950. By the mid-1960s, though, she largely moved on from the smallest tiaras in her collection, including both this bandeau and the Cartier Halo Tiara. For years, many of us speculated about the tiara’s fate. Some of us (including me!) have hoped that the tiara remains in the royal vaults, while others wondered whether Margaret may have decided to sell it, as she was known to have sold other royal jewels during her lifetime.

Recently, a royal blogger and a royal lady have teamed up to suggest that the lozenge tiara is actually now in the possession of a different royal family: that of the Malaysian state of Pahang. Based on visual comparisons, The Royal Watcher believes that a tiara now owned by Queen Azizah (pictured above wearing a different tiara) is the same one worn by Queen Mary and Princess Margaret. The Queen purchased the tiara at auction in America on the suggestion of a member of another royal family, Princess Chulabhorn of Thailand.

I think that, visually, the argument is a compelling one. As Margaret was known to have privately sold jewels, it’s certainly possible. I do think that more documentation of the piece’s provenance would be necessary to confirm that the tiaras are the same jewel, and not two of the same design made by the same jeweler or a later copy. Some tiaras worn by royal ladies were acquired as stock pieces rather than unique commissions–this matching piece to another of Queen Mary’s jewels comes to mind. A clearer chain of ownership would help to clear that up. What do all of you think?