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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

The Best Royal Jewels of 2020: #5 (A Sparkling Nassau Wedding Tiara)

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Tatler/Instagram

Our countdown of the best royal jewels of 2020 has arrived at number four: a surprise royal wedding with a sparkling heirloom bridal tiara!

Tatler/Instagram

In September, Archduchess Gabriella of Austria, the younger daughter of Archduke Carl Christian of Austria and Princess Marie Astrid of Luxembourg, married her partner, Prince Henri of Bourbon-Parma, in an outdoor ceremony at Schloss Tratzberg in Austria. The couple had been engaged since October 2017, shortly before the birth of their daughter, Princess Victoria. 
Henri and Gabriella are second cousins: both of them are great-grandchildren of Princess Charlotte of Luxembourg and Prince Felix of Bourbon-Parma. (Marlene Koenig does a good job of tracing the multiple ways that the two are related in her blog post on the couple’s engagement and Princess Victoria’s birth.) In the image above, a screencapture from an Instagram story, the newlywed bride and groom pose with Gabriella’s parents and their daughter.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Archduchess Gabriella anchored her veil with the Grand Duchess Adelade Tiara, an heirloom from her mother’s native Luxembourg. The tiara dates to the nineteenth century. It features a complicated leaf design that is studded with diamond berries, with a lovely central sapphire.
Albert Nieboer/Royal Press Europe/DPA/Alamy

The tiara is one of the most wearable pieces in Luxembourg’s grand ducal jewelry collection, and it’s been worn by numerous family members. Grand Duchess Maria Teresa has worn it often, as has Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie. Above, Princess Claire of Luxembourg wears the tiara during the National Day gala in 2018.
Pedro Bellido

Archduchess Gabriella is the second family member to wear the Grand Duchess Adelaide Tiara as a bridal diadem. In 2017, Princess Marie Gabrielle of Nassau, daughter of Prince Jean of Luxembourg, wore the tiara for her wedding to Antonius Willms.
Tatler/Instagram

Here’s one more peek at the couple on their wedding day, courtesy of another screencapture from Instagram stories. Gabriella paired the Adelaide tiara with classic pearl drop earrings for the day.
Our countdown will continue bright and early tomorrow morning!

The Radziwill Tiara

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Hindman

The royal jewelry world has been buzzing for the last few weeks about an upcoming tiara auction. Today, I’ve got all the history—and the sale results!—of the sparkling Radziwill Tiara.

Hindman

The nineteenth-century tiara, made of silver and gold, features a bow and festoon base topped by seven pear-shaped diamond-set elements. Each of these pear-shaped toppers features two brilliants surrounded by a cluster of smaller stones. While all of the gems in the tiara were originally diamonds, today the seven largest stones are simulated diamonds, having been replaced by “a previous owner.”
Hindman

The first documented owner of the tiara was Princess Dolores Radziwill. She was the Spanish-born wife of Prince Dominik Radziwill, a Polish aristocrat who was descended from the wealthy (and extensive) Radziwill family. Together, Dominik and Dolores restored Balice Castle, a lavish seventeenth-century residence near Krakow. Their aristocratic circle included Archduke Karl Stephan of Austria (a younger brother of Queen Maria Cristina of Spain), who owned a large estate in Żywiec. In January 1909, the two families were united when Dominik and Dolores’s second son, Prince Jerome, married Archduchess Renata, Karl Stephan’s second daughter. Though the Radziwills must have rejoiced at their son’s marriage to a member of the House of Habsburg, Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary was less thrilled with the alliance. While he consented to the marriage, he also publicly announced that, because the match was not an equal one, Renata would lose her titles and rank and would be shut out of the exclusive Viennese imperial court. It’s not surprising, then, that newspapers reported that the couple’s engagement created “something of a sensation” in courts all over Europe.
Hindman

As a wedding gift, Prince Dominik and Princess Dolores offered their new daughter-in-law several pieces of jewelry from the family collection. On her wedding day, Renata wore the diamond tiara with its distinctive seven pear-shaped toppers. Though the auction house that recently sold the tiara highlighted the piece as coming from the House of Habsburg, and it was worn by an archduchess on her wedding day, it’s more correct to note that it has Polish aristocratic roots rather than Austrian imperial heritage.
Wedding of Prince Dominik and Princess Eugenie, May 1938

Renata died in May 1935, three years before her elder son followed in his father’s footsteps and made an impressive marital alliance of his own. The engagement of Prince Dominik, named for his grandfather, to Princess Eugenie of Greece and Denmark was announced in Athens in February 1938. The princess was a first cousin of King George II of the Hellenes, Greece’s much-exiled king, and the daughter of a French imperial princess, Marie Bonaparte. (The couple were distantly connected: Dominik’s uncle, Prince Constantine Radziwill, married to Eugenie’s great-aunt, Louise Blanc [aunt of Princess Marie Bonaparte]. The Blancs are probably best remembered as the owners of the Monte-Carlo Casino.) Dominik and Eugenie were married on May 30, 1938, at the Cathedral of Saint-Louis des Invalides in Paris.
Wedding of Prince Dominik and Princess Eugenie, May 1938

On her wedding day, Princess Eugenie wore the same diamond tiara that her late mother-in-law had worn several decades earlier. The tiara was a gift from her father-in-law, Prince Jerome—or so she thought, anyway. The Radziwill marriage was not a long one. After welcoming two children, Princess Tatiana and Prince George, and subsequently settling in South Africa, the couple divorced in 1946. Shortly afterward, Prince Dominik married again. He and his new young American wife arrived in Cape Town, where he wrote to Princess Eugenie to ask for a key to their bank box to retrieve a pair of cufflinks. She agreed.
According to the New York Daily News, however, Prince Dominik took much more than just his cufflinks. Newspapers offered a list of the pieces he “reclaimed” from the box: “the Habsburg necklace, a double string of diamonds, a tiara of pear-shaped diamonds, a large diamond brooch and a set of emerald jewelry which once had adorned the person of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.” (Note that the diamond tiara was on the list.) Betrayed, Princess Eugenie sued him for the return of the pieces, which she argued had been gifts to her from her father-in-law Prince Jerome, who had died in 1945. Prince Dominik claimed that, to the contrary, they’d never been hers at all; instead, he’d inherited them personally from his late mother, and he had merely allowed Eugenie to wear them during their marriage. Ultimately, they settled the matter out of court. The terms of the settlement don’t appear to have been made public, and I don’t know if any of the jewels were returned to Eugenie. (We know that the Habsburg Necklace, which was set with 15 large and 89 small diamonds, was not, as Prince Dominik offered it at auction in Cape Town in 1950. It fetched a much lower price than he’d hoped for.)
Hindman

On December 7, the tiara was sold at auction in Chicago by Hindman. We don’t know the identity of the seller, though it’s worth noting that Prince Dominik does have two surviving daughters from his second marriage. But, because we know for certain that Dominik was willing to sell pieces of jewelry during his lifetime, it’s also possible that the present seller doesn’t have any connections to the family at all. Regardless, the tiara seems to have been the beneficiary of the famous “royal bump” at auction. Even though the seven largest “diamonds” in the tiara are indeed paste, the piece significantly exceeded its auction estimate of $6,000-8,000, selling for $68,750.

Luxembourg Celebrates a Royal Baptism (and a Royal Wedding!)

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© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

On Saturday, the royals of Luxembourg celebrated an important occasion: the baptism of a future grand duke! Here’s a look at some of the jewelry we saw during the baptism of Prince Charles of Luxembourg and the wedding of his cousin, Archduchess Gabriella.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

Little Prince Charles, who was born on May 10, is the first child of Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume and Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie of Luxembourg. He is currently second in line to the throne of Luxembourg, after his father. (His grandparents are Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa.) The baby’s full name is Charles Jean Philippe Joseph Marie Guillaume, which honors several members of his family. The name “Charles” likely honors his great-great-grandmother, Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg, and “Jean” pays tribute to his great-grandfather, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg. Phillipe was the name of Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie’s late father, Count Philippe of Lannoy.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

Nearly the entire grand ducal family attended the baptism, which was held on September 19 at the Abbey of St. Maurice and St. Maurus of Clervaux. The only members of the family not in attendance were the baby’s aunt, Princess Alexandra, and two of his cousins, Prince Gabriel and Prince Noah. Several members of the Lannoy family were also in attendance and took part in the ceremony.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

Prince Charles has two godparents, one from each side of his family. His godfather is his father’s brother, Prince Louis of Luxembourg. His godmother is his mother’s sister, Countess Gaëlle of Lannoy, who is a religious sister. The ceremony conducted was a thanksgiving for the baby’s baptism, including a completion of the rites of baptism. It seems that the actual baptism took place earlier and in private, perhaps on the same day that he was born, and possibly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie wore some lovely vintage jewels for the service. Her diamond earrings look delicate, but they must be quite heavy, as they have wires to loop over the top of the wearer’s ear to help distribute the weight. That suggests that they’re older, perhaps nineteenth century. We’ve seen the earrings on Stephanie on several previous occasions; she likes to pair them with the Grand Duchess Adelaide Tiara. They’ve also been worn by one of Stephanie’s sisters, which seems to confirm that they come from the Lannoy family.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

She also wore a sautoir-style necklace of pearls, including a pearl tassel.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

Grand Duchess Maria Teresa wore a pair of modern earrings with her white and pink outfit for the day.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

Here’s a closer look at the long earrings.

© Cour grand-ducale/Sophie Margue

And Princess Claire, Guillaume and Stephanie’s sister-in-law, wore a golden necklace with a pair of charms.

One week earlier, several members of the grand ducal family gathered to celebrate the wedding of Archduchess Gabriella, daughter of Archduke Carl-Christian and Archduchess Marie Astrid of Austria. Marie Astrid is the elder sister of Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg. Archduchess Gabriella married her second cousin, Prince Henri of Bourbon-Parma, who is a grandson of Princess Marie Gabriele of Luxembourg (sister of Grand Duke Jean and aunt of Grand Duke Henri). Gabriella and Henri have a daughter, Victoria, who will turn three in October.

For her wedding day, Archduchess Gabriella borrowed an important family jewel from her uncle: the Grand Duchess Adelaide Tiara. She’s the second recent family bride to wear the tiara; her cousin, Princess Marie Gabrielle of Nassau, wore the tiara for her wedding in September 2017. Archduchess Gabriella wore pearl drop earrings with the tiara.