It has a stellar royal provenance (a gift from a British king to a Swedish crown princess), a complicated family history, and a place in a current queen’s jewel collection, but the ruby tiara given by Edward VII to his niece, Margaret of Connaught, is rather divisive when it comes to aesthetics. If you had a chance to make changes to this tiara, what would you do? Put on your creative thinking caps and offer us some options!
Redesign It: The Henckel von Donnersmarck Tiara
Since emerald is the birthstone designated for May babies, I thought it only fitting that we consider how we’d re-imagine one of the most valuable emerald tiaras ever to hit the auction block: the emerald and diamond tiara made around 1900 by Chaumet for the second wife of Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, a German industrialist and aristocrat. If you had the chance to make changes to this rather interesting emerald sparkler, what would you do?
Redesign It: The Burmese Ruby Tiara
As the showers of April bring on the flowers of May, let’s turn our creative attention to one of the most polarizing floral tiaras in any royal collection: Queen Elizabeth II’s Burmese Ruby Tiara. Made from the diamonds of a dismantled floral diadem — the Nizam of Hyderabad Tiara — and a cache of rubies given to the Queen as a wedding present, the tiara features stylized Tudor roses, which combine the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York into one harmonious bloom. If you had the chance, how would you redesign this ’70s-era sparkler?