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Princess Benedikte’s Floral Birthday Tiara

04.14.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

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Some of the most magnificent royal jewels in the world reside in the collections of a trio of Danish royal sisters: Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (our current Magpie of the Month!), Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, and Benedikte, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. Today, we’re focusing on Benedikte’s diamond floral tiara, which she received as a coming-of-age birthday gift.

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Like the tiara given two years later to her younger sister, Anne-Marie, this tiara was made partially from another piece of jewelry; this time, it’s a brooch. However, the brooch came from the other side of the family. It once belonged to Queen Alexandrine, Benedikte’s paternal grandmother.

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Alexandrine left the floral brooch to Queen Ingrid, who supplemented it with additional diamond elements to form this tiara for Benedikte. The original brooch makes up the center of the reworked piece. Additionally, the diamond that forms the heart of the central floral element can be swapped out for an emerald. Versatile!

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And even better, the brooch can still be removed from the tiara and worn separately. In March 2012, Benedikte wore the brooch pinned to her gown during a visit from the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.

Benedikte has been wearing the tiara since she received it from her parents as an eighteenth-birthday gift in 1962. Although Benedikte was never destined to be a queen (or a queen consort) like her sisters, she has attended numerous high-profile state events throughout her life. An early appearance for the tiara came in April 1964, when she made a visit with her parents to the Vatican.

Benedikte tends to be generous in sharing her tiaras with her daughters, and both Alexandra and Nathalie have been spotted in the piece in recent years. Above, you can see Nathalie sporting the sparkler at the May 2004 wedding of her cousin, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. (Beside her, Alexandra wears another tiara from her mother’s collection, Queen Sofia’s Star and Pearl Tiara.)

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For the May 2008 wedding of another cousin, Prince Joachim of Denmark, Alexandra wore the tiara with additional diamond accessories and a very sparkly sequinned wrap.

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Even though the SWBs are minor royals, Benedikte is still an important part of the Danish royal family. She even serves as one of the formal regents for the country; if the queen and the crown prince both leave the country, another family member — Princess Benedikte, Prince Joachim, or Princess Elisabeth — has to stay behind and act as temporary regent. Thankfully, Benedikte’s continuing closeness with her Danish family means that we see all of the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg ladies sparkling at tiara events quite regularly.

The Connaught Pearl Bar Brooch

04.12.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

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The brooch we’re focusing on today isn’t the grandest piece of jewelry that belongs to our Magpie of the Month, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, but it is a jewel with a remarkable history that links three royal families: the Connaught Pearl Bar Brooch.

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The design of the brooch is simple: three natural pearls surrounded by diamonds and arranged in a horizontal bar formation, with extra diamonds studded between the clusters. The brooch appears to be set in silver and gold.

Princess Patricia wears the brooch on her wedding day in 1919 (Illustrated London News)

The brooch originally belonged to Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia, who married one of Queen Victoria’s sons, the Duke of Connaught, in 1879. She later gave the brooch to her younger daughter, Princess Patricia of Connaught. When Patricia married Alexander Ramsay in 1919, relinquishing her royal title in the process, she pinned the brooch to the bodice of her wedding gown.

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In April 1958 — sixty years ago this month — Patricia presented the brooch to her great-niece, Crown Princess Margrethe of Denmark, as an eighteenth-birthday gift. Margrethe has worn the brooch regularly in the six decades that have elapsed since. In May 2006, she chose the brooch for a press conference aboard the royal yacht at the start of an official visit to Greece. (Also of note in this photo: Margrethe’s massive toi et moi engagement ring, which you can read about over here!)

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Margrethe often pairs the brooch with the same modern diamond earrings that she wore in Greece. Here, she wears the brooch and earrings together during an official visit from King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands in June 2013.

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Margrethe wears the brooch on a variety of colors. Here, she fixed the brooch on an orange-red ensemble for an IOC meeting in Copenhagen in October 2009.

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She also often wears the brooch with blue clothing, as she did for the start of the official Russian visit to Copenhagen in April 2010.

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Although Margrethe often places the brooch traditionally on her chest, she has on occasion placed it in more unexpected ways. For a gala hosted by the Danish-American Society in New York in June 2011, she pinned the brooch in the center of her bodice.

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Margrethe has also used the brooch as an enhancer ornament on one of her pearl necklaces. She wore the piece this way in May 2004 for the Spanish royal wedding in Madrid, fastening the brooch horizontally near her neckline. The brooch may not be a grand piece, but it has a grand family history — something we know Margrethe values just as much.

Princess Louise’s Diamond and Pearl Drop Brooch

04.08.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

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Our weekend look at some of the grandest brooches in royal jewelry boxes lands in Denmark today, where Queen Margrethe wears a magnificent diamond and pearl brooch that has been in Denmark’s royal vaults for several generations. Here’s how the diamond and pearl brooch that belonged to Queen Louise of Sweden ended up in Copenhagen.

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The brooch features a central diamond piece with scroll and floral elements, topped by a pearl and diamond button cluster. Five pear-shaped pearl pendants are suspended from the bottom of the brooch.

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In 1825, Princess Louise, daughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, married Prince Frederick of the Netherlands. Among her wedding gifts was a pair of matched pearl and diamond jewels: a tiara with eighteen pear-shaped pearl pendants and the brooch we’re discussing today. Because the bride was a Prussian princess, some have speculated that both the tiara and brooch may have been made in present-day Germany, perhaps in Berlin. (You can read a lengthy post about the tiara here.) Louise wore both the tiara and the brooch in the portrait above, which was painted by Jean-Baptiste van der Hulst in 1836.

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Princess Louise passed her diamond and pearl brooch along to her daughter, also named Louise. In 1849, the younger Louise married Crown Prince Carl of Sweden, and the couple eventually became King Carl XV and Queen Louise of Sweden and Norway. Queen Louise was depicted wearing the diamond and pearl brooch in the portrait above, which was painted by Amalia Lindegren. She also eventually inherited her mother’s pearl drop tiara, but because very little time elapsed between their deaths, she never got to wear it.

Instead, the tiara and brooch were passed along to Queen Louise’s only surviving child, Princess Lovisa of Sweden. When Lovisa married Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark in 1869, she added additional pearl and diamond pieces to her personal collection, and she began wearing them all as a set (or a “married” parure, as the jewels coordinate, but were not made to match).

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Lovisa paired her mother’s pearl drop brooch and tiara with a pearl and diamond necklace given to her by the Khedive of Egypt. (Part of that necklace was later repurposed to create a matching set of earrings.) A pearl and diamond double cluster brooch, a gift from her Russian in-laws, Tsar Alexander III of Russia and his wife, Maria Feodorovna, rounded out the set. Frederik and Lovisa became King Frederik VIII and Queen Lovisa of Denmark in 1906, and the pearl drop brooch graced the gowns of a queen consort once more.

The set has become, in practice, reserved for the use of Denmark’s queens. Lovisa eventually passed the jewels along to her daughter-in-law, Queen Alexandrine, who wore them occasionally. When Alexandrine’s elder son became King Frederik IX in 1946, her daughter-in-law, Queen Ingrid, began wearing the pearl and diamond jewels, including the brooch. Above, Ingrid wears the pearl drop brooch pinned at the neckline of her gown at the wedding of Princess Ragnhild of Norway in May 1953.

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The brooch, along with the rest of the married parure, is now worn by Ingrid’s daughter, Queen Margrethe II. Above, she wears the brooch and jewels at the very beginning of her reign, for a dinner given at Amalienborg for the diplomatic corps in May 1973.

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Margrethe has continued wearing the suite throughout her reign, often in the same configuration. You’ll generally find the brooch pinned at the center of the neckline of her gowns, just as her mother wore it. Margrethe wore it in that position in June 2010 for one of the biggest royal events of a generation, the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden in Stockholm.

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But you’ll sometimes also see Margrethe wearing the brooch in other ways. She has occasionally used it as the centerpiece of a pearl necklace, and for the Belgian state visit to Denmark in March 2017, she used it to secure the sash of the Order of Leopold. Princess Louise’s brooch and tiara may not have been made to match all pieces of this married parure, but they continue to coordinate well with the rest of Queen Lovisa’s wedding pearls today.