More Incredible New Year Diamonds for Queen Mary in Copenhagen

Last week, the King and Queen of Denmark held two more traditional New Year receptions in Copenhagen, and Queen Mary dipped into a special collection of family jewels to find heirloom diamonds to wear for both occasions.

On Monday, King Frederik X and Queen Mary hosted the second New Year reception of 2025. This reception, held at Christiansborg Palace, welcomed members of the diplomatic corps to the palace. Foreign ambassadors had a chance to greet the King and Queen personally during the traditional, formal event.

The eighteenth-century palace is the workplace of the Danish monarch, as well as the home of Denmark’s Parliament and the nation’s Supreme Court. Numerous other government offices, including the office of the Prime Minister, are also housed in the palace. Here, the royal couple is pictured during the reception in the Great Hall, in which a series of colorful modern tapestries by the artist Bjørn Nørgaard are displayed. The tapestries, which showcase the history of Denmark, were a gift from the Danish government to Queen Margrethe II to mark her 50th birthday in 1990.

Only the first New Year levee of each year is a tiara event, but Queen Mary wore gala gowns, decorations, and jewelry for the second and third receptions. For the diplomatic reception, she opted for a familiar metallic brocade dress from Rickie Freeman for Teri Jon, previously worn during the couple’s recent visit to Greenland. For this winter reception, she layered a white blouse with a turtleneck collar underneath the dress and wore long white gloves.

Along with her sparkling decorations—the sash and star of the Order of the Elephant, the ribbon and badge of the Order of the Dannebrog, and her husband’s royal portrait order—Queen Mary wore jewelry pieces from a special collection of family jewels, the Danish Royal Property Trust. The collection was established in 1910 by King Frederik VIII and Queen Lovisa, with the object of preserving jewelry in the family collection and passing it from monarch to monarch. The pieces in the trust are generally worn only by the Queen of Denmark.

For Monday’s reception, Queen Mary reached for a special pair of diamond earrings from the trust. These eighteenth-century earrings feature round diamond studs and pear-shaped diamond drops. They originally belonged to Princess Anne of Orange (1709-1759), the eldest daughter of King George II of Great Britain. Anne’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Queen Lovisa, brought the earrings with her to Denmark more than a century after Anne’s death. This is Queen Mary’s second public appearance in the earrings, after the Icelandic state banquet in October.

Mary also made a debut appearance in another piece of jewelry from the trust during Monday’s reception. On her left wrist, she wore a distinctive gold and diamond bracelet from the collection.

The bracelet, which has an elaborate diamond-set clasp, also arrived in Denmark with Queen Lovisa. A generation earlier, Lovisa’s father, King Carl XV of Sweden, had presented the bracelet to her mother, Princess Louise of the Netherlands, as an engagement gift in 1850. The clasp of the bracelet is detachable and can be worn separately as a brooch.

We got to see more heirloom jewelry from the Danish Royal Property Trust on Tuesday, when King Frederik and Queen Mary arrived for the third New Year reception, also held at Christiansborg Palace. This time, the guest list included military officers and emergency management officials, as well as selected representatives of royal patronages and various national organizations.

For the second reception, Mary wore an ice-blue evening ensemble, consisting of a blue blouse and a skirt with a silvery pattern. She’s worn this particular outfit numerous times over the years, including previous New Year reception appearances.

With her gala ensemble, Mary made her first public appearance in more pieces of jewelry from the Danish Royal Property Trust: a pair of diamond earrings and a coordinating brooch. Both pieces of jewelry have an intricate, floral-inspired design, and though they were not made as part of a set, they go together beautifully as part of a married demi-parure.

Here’s a closer look at the earrings, which are made of brilliant-cut diamonds set in gold. The different sections of the earrings can be removed, so that they can be worn at different lengths, and you’ll note that Mary wore a slightly shorter setting than the complete one shown here. The earrings are said to have originally belonged to Hereditary Princess Caroline (1793-1881), the elder daughter of King Frederik VI of Denmark. She and her husband, Hereditary Prince Ferdinand, struggled to stay out of debt, and when she died in 1881, the earrings were sold at auction. Happily, the purchaser was Queen Lovisa of Denmark, who paired the earrings with similar items of jewelry that she had inherited from her Swedish royal ancestors. Later, the earrings became great favorites of Queen Margrethe II.

Mary wore one of those coordinating Swedish jewels for Tuesday’s New Year reception as well, pinning one of the large square diamond brooches from the trust at the center of the neckline of her blouse. The brooches were originally made to be used as clasps for the robes required by Sweden’s elaborate court dress, securing them near the wearer’s shoulders, and you’ll sometimes see them called “shoulder brooches” because of that. They were made in the 1840s, likely for Queen Josefina of Sweden. Like so many of the jewels in the trust, they came to Denmark with Queen Lovisa, who was Josefina’s granddaughter.

Before we leave Copenhagen today, a quick glimpse at one of my favorite photographs shared by the Danish royal court from Tuesday’s reception. The enormous painting behind the queued guests will likely look familiar to many of you.

It’s by the famed Danish painter Laurits Tuxen, who produced several of these large group family portraits for the Danish royal family at the end of the nineteenth century. He documented the weddings of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, as well as the nuptials of King George V and Queen Mary of the United Kingdom. This particular family painting shows King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark at Fredensborg Palace, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. In total, there are eight monarchs depicted in this painting: King Christian IX, King Frederik VIII, and King Christian X of Denmark; King Edward VII of the United Kingdom; Emperor Alexander III and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia; King George I of the Hellenes; and King Haakon VII of Norway.