Princess Margaret’s Sapphire and Emerald Ring Sells at Auction in England

Last week, a little piece of royal history was sold at auction in England: a sapphire and emerald ring once owned by Princess Margaret that also apparently had ties to another royal relative, the Marquess of Cambridge.

On November 21, Fellows Auctioneers sold a sapphire and emerald flower ring that was previously part of the private collection of Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. The gold ring was described in the auction literature as consisting of “marquise-cut sapphire petals which encircled a cabochon emerald,” presented in the shape of “a blue and green flower.”

This is not the first time that the flower ring has been offered for sale at an auction house. After Princess Margaret’s death, it was included in the Christie’s sale coordinated by her son, the present Earl of Snowdon. The catalogue from that auction called the ring “a stylised flower set with a cabochon emerald centre and marquise-cut sapphire petals to the openwork scroll shoulders.” On that occasion, it was sold for 11,400 pounds, significantly exceeding the meager 300-500 pound estimate.

The press office at Fellows notes that “Princess Margaret’s connection to the ring was indisputable,” adding, “The ring was inscribed and sold with plentiful supporting documentation” that included the paperwork from the previous sale at Christie’s. There’s another physical reminder of the late princess on the ring itself, too: her royal cypher is engraved on the inside of the band.

Exactly when and how Margaret might have acquired the ring isn’t spelled out by the Fellows catalogue or the lot notes from the earlier Christie’s auction, but the recent auction literature does offer us some interesting hints. The Fellows press materials note that the “ring was sold with a certificate of provenance as well as a copy of correspondence between Lord Glenconner and Princess Margaret.” Colin Tennant, the 3rd Baron Glenconner, was one of Margaret’s closest friends, and his wife, Lady Anne Coke, was one of the princess’s ladies-in-waiting. Intriguingly, the Fellows notes also state, “The provenance documents also included a letter to the original purchaser from Lord Glenconner and a copy of the Christie’s auction catalogue.” The original purchaser, presumably, is the person who bought the ring at the Christie’s auction in 2006. Exactly what Tennant and the purchaser discussed in the letter is not revealed.

There’s one more royal connection to the ring—or, more specifically, to the ring box that was also included as part of the auction lot. Follows shares that “the green leather case that accompanied the ring” featured the handwritten name “Dolly” on the silk lining of the inside of the box. The same inscription was also noted in the Christie’s auction literature from 2006.

“Dolly” was the family nickname of Princess Margaret’s great-uncle, Prince Adolphus of Teck. He was the eldest of the three brothers of Queen Mary, and he inherited the Teck dukedom when their father died in 1900. Six years earlier, he had married Lady Margaret Grosvenor, a daughter of the wealthy Duke of Westminster. They had four children.

In 1917, in the midst of World War I, Dolly and Margaret relinquished their German royal titles at the request of his brother-in-law, King George V. In turn, George offered them new British aristocratic titles, making Dolly the 1st Marquess of Cambridge. He held the title until his death ten years later in 1927, three years before his great-niece, Princess Margaret, was born.

The fact that the box accompanying the ring is inscribed with Dolly’s name raises several possibilities. For one, the ring could have belonged to either Dolly or his wife, and then later could have been given to or acquired by Princess Margaret. Dolly himself couldn’t have purchased the ring as a gift for Margaret, because he died before it was born, but he could have acquired it as a gift for another family member (Queen Mary? Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother?) who then gave it to Margaret.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that the ring doesn’t have any connection to Dolly at all. It’s possible that just the box was associated somehow with Dolly, and the ring was later placed in the box in place of a previous piece of jewelry that was housed there. Given the limited information available, we can’t say for sure how the box and the ring fit together, or how they’re connected to the late Marquess.

When the hammer fell on the ring at Fellows last week, it did not quite achieve the heights that it did at Christie’s eighteen years ago. The auction house’s International Head of Jewellery, Paul Greer, wrote: “We are delighted that bidding was strong in today’s Fine Jewellery auction for the Princess Margaret emerald and sapphire ring. After a few hectic minutes of spirited bidding, the piece achieved an impressive hammer price of £5,200, finding a new home with a discerning collector.” The unknown buyer was an online bidder participating through the Fellows Live service offered by the auction company.