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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

The Greville Festoon Necklace

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Of all the diamond necklaces in the British royal vaults, few pack as much diamond firepower as the incredible Greville Festoon Necklace. Today, we’re taking a deep dive into the history of this fabulous royal jewel.

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The diamond and platinum necklace was part of the enormous jewelry bequest left by Mrs. Ronald Greville to the Queen Mother in 1942. Mrs. Greville was a voracious collector of jewels, and, much like Queen Mary, was prone to making and remaking pieces from her own collection. This necklace is one of those pieces. Made by Cartier in 1929, the original incarnation of the piece was a two-row necklace; that original necklace makes up most of the bottom section of the necklace that you see today.

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But Mrs. Greville, always looking to amp up her jewels, went back to Cartier in 1938 to have the piece made even more magnificent. The jeweler added three more rows of diamonds and reworked the back chain sections of the piece. The result, according to Hugh Roberts, was “comparable in richness to some of the work carried out by Cartier for its Indian clients.” (For reference, see our recent post on Cartier’s Patiala Necklace.) The five-row necklace is the version that was left to the Queen Mother, who occasionally wore all five rows for major events. Above, she wears the complete necklace with the original version of the Greville Tiara during the state visit of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands to the UK in 1950.

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More often, though, the Queen Mother chose to wear just the three-row section from the remodeled necklace for gala events. The entire necklace is really enormous, basically a giant diamond bib, but the three-row section is a bit more forgiving and easier to wear. Above, the Queen Mother wears the three-row necklace during the German state visit in 1998. (It’s incredible to see her wearing a tiara and gala jewels at nearly 100!)

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When the Queen Mother died in 2002, the necklace was inherited by Queen Elizabeth II, who has never worn the piece in public. Instead, it’s one of the jewels she placed on loan to the Duchess of Cornwall. Camilla is particularly skilled at wearing spectacular necklaces — you can see our entire post on her necklace collection over here — and she managed to pull off the five-row version of the necklace during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2007. We haven’t seen her wear the necklace for quite some time; I’d love to see her try the smaller, three-row version soon!

Jewels in Motion: Elizabeth Taylor’s Cartier Rubies

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Our celebration of jewels made by Cartier wraps up today with a look at a romantic suite of ruby and diamond jewels that belonged to a member of Hollywood royalty: Dame Elizabeth Taylor.

Mike Todd, Taylor’s third husband, gave her the set of ruby and diamond jewels in 1957 while the couple were on holiday in France with friends (including Todd’s best friend, Eddie Fisher, who Taylor would marry after Todd’s tragic death).
“They had been renting a chateau in the south of France, and Elizabeth … had been swimming in the pool, doing laps, wearing the Mike Todd Tiara,” a Christie’s spokesman explains, “when Mike Todd arrived carrying red boxes. And we all know what red boxes mean: Cartier.”
“There wasn’t a mirror around, so Elizabeth used the reflection of the pool to see herself” wearing the new ruby and diamond suite.” Home movie cameras captured the moment that Todd presented Taylor with the jewels.
When Taylor’s jewels were sold at Christie’s in 2011, the earrings, necklace, and bracelet were lots 74-76. (They were displayed in the auction preview beside another ruby jewel from Taylor’s collection, a ring made by Van Cleef and Arpels.)
The bib necklace alone absolutely demolished its pre-auction estimate of $200,000-$300,000, selling for an astonishing $3,778,500.
The earrings from the set fetched $782,500, while the bracelet sold for $842,500. In this image, Todd fastens the necklace around his wife’s neck, while Taylor puts on the earrings. Note the trademark Cartier red box casually wedged under Todd’s arm!

Jewels in Motion: The Patiala Necklace

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Our series on the grand royal jewels made by Cartier continues today with a whopper of a piece: the necklace commissioned from the firm by the Maharaja of Patiala.

The necklace is the single largest commission ever made by Cartier. In 1928, Sir Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patialia, arrived at the firm’s Paris headquarters with literal buckets full of loose gems and asked them to make him a necklace.
Among the bounty of loose gemstones was one very important diamond: the 234.69-carat De Beers Diamond, which the maharaja had inherited from his father, Maharaja Sir Rajinder Singh. Rajinder had purchased the pale yellow, golf ball-sized diamond, which was at the time the seventh-largest polished diamond in the world, after seeing it exhibited in Paris in the 1880s.
In 2002, Wendy Moonan of the New York Times described the creation process: “The necklace is basically Art Deco in style; Cartier was at the vanguard of designing jewelry, clocks and objets d’art in the Deco style. When the necklace was completed in 1928, Cartier was so proud of the craftsmanship that it asked if the necklace could be exhibited before being sent to India. The maharajah agreed.”
The gemstone count on the finished necklace was, well, insane. The platinum necklace was set with 2,390 diamonds, including the De Beers and a large diamond described as “tobacco-colored.” Two Burmese rubies were also set in the piece. 
The necklace became one of the flamboyant prince’s most treasured pieces of jewelry, and he wore it regularly until his death in 1938. The necklace was last worn in public by his son, Maharaja Yadavindra Singh, in 1941.
And then the necklace went missing from the Patiala treasury, although some believe that it may have been quietly sold for tax reasons. In 1982, the De Beers Diamond popped up at auction at Sotheby’s Geneva. And then, in 1998, a Cartier associate, Eric Nussbaum, found the platinum chains of the necklace in a second-hand jewelry store in London. 
Nussbaum convinced Cartier that they should purchase the remaining parts of the necklace and restore it, replacing the enormous missing gemstones with synthetic stones and cubic zirconium. It took Cartier’s jewelers two years to restore the magnificent piece.
Now, Cartier regularly exhibits the necklace, so that all of us can experience a little bit of the incredible wealth and lifestyle of Patiala’s most extravagant ruler.