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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Royal Jewel Rewind: Queen Margrethe’s 70th Birthday (Part Two)

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Time for more jewels from Queen Margrethe’s 70th birthday celebrations! In this post, we’re marveling at the jewels worn to the gala at the Royal Theatre. A volcanic ash cloud may have prevented some of the royals from making it to this event, but there was still plenty of sparkle to go around.

The Queen selected the emerald parure from the Danish crown jewels for this birthday event. The set was made for Queen Caroline Amalie in 1840, but the 67 emeralds date from the eighteenth century.

Crown Princess Mary wore the newly-renovated version of the magnificent ruby parure. Read all about the history of the ruby set, which was worn at Napoleon’s coronation, over here!

Princess Marie wore the floral tiara; she also secured her sash with a diamond brooch.

Countess Sussie of Rosenborg (seated behind Mary), wife of one of the Queen’s cousins, wore Queen Alexandrine’s Fringe Tiara. Countess Anne-Dorte of Rosenborg (seated behind Marie) is wearing a sapphire and diamond tiara that was originally a wedding present given to Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia, Queen Alexandrine’s mother.

Princess Benedikte wore the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg Fringe Tiara, as well as the diamond necklace that once belonged to Queen Alexandrine.

Benedikte’s younger daughter, Princess Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, wore her the Star and Pearl Tiara that once belonged to her grandmother, Queen Ingrid.

Carina Axelsson, partner of Prince Gustav of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, wore a diamond tiara and earrings.

The Queen’s youngest sister, Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, wore the Greek royal family’s spectacular emerald parure. More about that set, which has Romanov roots, over here!

Princess Alexia of Greece and Denmark, Queen Anne-Marie’s elder daughter, wore her usual diamond floral tiara with dramatic drop earrings.

Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg wore the Chaumet Emerald Tiara with the family’s diamond and emerald choker necklace.

Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway wore the convertible tiara from the family’s amethyst parure.

Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, who would be the bride at a seriously glittering royal wedding in only a few months’ time, wore the family’s Four-Button Tiara with a string of pearls.

Tune in later this afternoon for one more royal gala event!

Royal Jewel Rewind: Charles and Camilla’s Wedding (2005)

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Happy tenth wedding anniversary to the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall! Time certainly flies — it seems impossible that this particular royal wedding was an entire decade ago. Let’s have a look at the jewels we saw on the day, shall we?

Charles and Camilla were married in a civil ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor, and Camilla wore a simple white suit and hat. Her jewelry for the first service was relatively simple. Her earrings are pearl drops attached to diamond button studs. The brooch pinned to the lapel of her Robinson Valentine jacket was a gift from Prince Charles. Made of diamonds surrounding a black pearl, the brooch is designed with a Prince of Wales feather motif. At the time of the wedding, newspapers reported that it was one of the jewels commissioned by King Edward VII for Camilla’s great-grandmother, Alice Keppel.

Camilla also wore bracelets with her civil ceremony outfit…

…and, of course, her engagement ring, which we discussed in detail here in yesterday’s post. Her Wartski-made wedding ring is composed of Welsh gold, as per British royal tradition.

The civil ceremony was followed by an Anglican blessing at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. For this service, Camilla changed into another Robinson Valentine creation, a long blue silk gown with delicate embroidery. The pattern embroidered on the dress was reportedly meant to echo the design of a piece of jewelry that had belonged to Camilla’s late mother. She also wore a fabulous gold feather headpiece by Philip Treacy. The ends of the feathers were tipped with Swarovski crystals.

With the blessing ensemble, Camilla wore a stunning pair of diamond earrings. These diamond floral earrings were also worn by her daughter, Laura Lopes, at her wedding the following year. Possibly the earrings are family heirlooms? (I’ve tried to compare them with the embroidery on the gown to decide whether or not the earrings are the jewels that inspired the pattern, but I’ve not found clear enough photos to decide whether they’re a match.)

The Queen wore a cream-colored outfit to the chapel for the blessing ceremony. With her usual pearl earrings and necklace, she wore the Golden Wattle Brooch, a piece given to her by the Australian people in 1954.

Charles’s sister, Princess Anne, wore one of her impressively-recycled outfits to the wedding. She accessorized with pearls and a gorgeous diamond floral brooch.

The Countess of Wessex chose a sentimental piece of jewelry for the wedding: a small diamond brooch of interlocking hearts, given to her by Prince Edward as a present on their first wedding anniversary.

Zara Phillips wore a dramatic hat, dress, and boots to the wedding; she also donned hoop earrings and a pendant necklace, as well as a large wristwatch.

No jewelry, as per usual, from Princess Beatrice of York, but she did wear one of my favorites of all of her fascinators.

Princess Eugenie also went sans jewels.

But the Duchess of Kent, who is sitting behind Camilla’s daughter, Laura, went with major pearls for the occasion.

The other Kent ladies, Princess Alexandra and Princess Michael, also wore significant jewelry. Alexandra has a lovely brooch tucked into the neckline of her blouse, while Marie-Christine chose exaggerated floral accessories and large pearls.

Marie-Christine’s daughter, Lady Gabriella Windsor, let the embroidery on her jacket do most of the accessory work, though she also wore a pair of earrings.

Serena Linley paired pearls with her fuchsia fascinator…

…and her sister-in-law, Lady Sarah Chatto, went with pearls as well.

Few foreign royals attended this low-key royal wedding, and those who did were there largely because of their personal ties to Charles. He’s close to Constantine and Anne-Marie of Greece, for example.With her pearls, the former Greek queen a sapphire and diamond brooch. I believe this is the same piece she wore in 1989 at her silver wedding anniversary party.

The other foreign royals attending were the Norwegian crown princely couple. They’re actually the foreign royals with the closest family ties to the current queen. Crown Prince Haakon’s grandfather, King Olav, was the son of a British princess; he was actually born on the Sandringham estate. Crown Princess Mette-Marit wore a lovely brooch to the wedding. I can’t recall seeing her wear it before or since (if I’m wrong, you know the drill — let me know in the comments!), but I’d be curious to know whether it might have connections to Queen Maud, given the occasion and its design.

Saturday Sparkler: Queen Maud’s Diamond Tiara

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Queen Maud of Norway [source]

The biggest diamond tiara in the Norwegian royal vaults is the stunning diadem that belonged to Queen Josefina of Sweden and Norway. However, there are reports that another historic diamond tiara — the one that once belonged to Queen Maud — has returned to the royal fold.

 
Queen Maud [source]
 
 

This tri-level diamond tiara was among the wedding presents that Princess Maud of Wales, the daughter of the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, received when she married her first cousin, Prince Carl of Denmark, in 1896. The base of the tiara is a diamond bandeau; above that sits a level of diamond floral elements; and atop that is perched a row of thirteen diamond buttons. Trond Norén Isaksen explains that Maud sometimes swapped out the top row of diamonds for turquoises. After she inherited her mother’s diamond and turquoise circlet, however, Maud used the turquoises in other pieces of jewelry.

Maud in her 1902 coronation robes [source]
 

Princess Maud wore the diamond tiara at the coronation of her parents in 1902. And then, three years later, something rather unexpected happened. In 1905, the newly-independent people of Norway voted to elect Maud’s husband as the new king of their country. Carl accepted the job and took on the regnal name of King Haakon VII, and Maud became a queen. She wore her diamond tiara frequently during her tenure as Norway’s queen; she even chose to wear it for the wedding of her only son, Olav, to Princess Märtha of Sweden in 1929.

 

Queen Maud and Crown Prince Olav [source]
 

Maud’s jewels went through a strange thirty-year odyssey following her unexpected death. Queen Maud liked to travel back to her British homeland often to visit relatives, and during one of these visits in 1938, she died of a heart attack. She had brought her jewels with her on that particular trip, intending to have the pieces cleaned. They weren’t returned to Norway with the late queen’s body, and with the outbreak of World War II the following year, the jewels were stashed away in Windsor Castle for safekeeping.

 

It wasn’t until 1953 that the jewels were reclaimed by Maud’s son and daughter-in-law, Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha, who brought them back to Norway following the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. But then Märtha died unexpectedly in 1954, and Maud’s jewels were not brought out again until Olav’s son, the future King Harald V, married in 1968.  When Olav and Märtha’s three children finally divided up the late queen’s jewels, Princess Ragnhild chose this tiara from the collection. She wore it frequently at royal events, usually in rotation with the diamond and pearl Boucheron tiara that she received from her maternal grandmother, Princess Ingeborg.

 

Queen Maud [source]
 

But unlike the Boucheron tiara, Queen Maud’s diamond tiara reportedly returned to the royal collection after Ragnhild’s death in 2012. (The tiaras that Princess Astrid received from her grandmother’s collection are expected to do the same after her death one day.) But, if it is currently back in the vaults, it’s not yet surfaced on the heads of one of the current Norwegian royal ladies. Many seem to think that Crown Princess Mette-Marit might be the first to wear the tiara, but it could also show up on Queen Sonja or Princess Märtha Louise. What do you think, dear readers: which Norwegian princess will be the first to wear Queen Maud’s diamond tiara in public again?