royal wedding – Page 52

The Queen Anne and Queen Caroline Pearl Necklaces

11.18.2017 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

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Our month-long focus on Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding gift jewelry arrives today at two pieces with serious British royal history: the Queen Anne and Queen Caroline Pearl Necklaces.

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The necklaces are generally worn together as a pair, resembling a double-stranded pearl necklace, but they are two distinct, separate pieces with individual clasps. The smaller necklace is the Queen Anne, which is strung with 46 pearls; the slightly longer Queen Caroline Necklace has 50 pearls. In Queen Victoria’s 1896 jewelry inventory, the provenance of each necklace is given; the inventory notes that the smaller necklace belonged to Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, and that the longer necklace belonged to Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II.

Elizabeth’s parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, offered the Queen Anne and Queen Caroline pearls to their daughter in 1947 as one of her wedding gifts. The necklaces were displayed along with numerous other jewelry presents at St. James’s Palace ahead of the wedding day.

Princess Elizabeth planned to wear the necklaces on her wedding day, but when she was getting ready to depart, staff realized that the necklaces were still on display with the rest of the couple’s wedding gifts. The Queen’s private secretary, Jock Colville, volunteered to fetch the pearls.

Traffic on the wedding day was a nightmare, but Colville managed to secure the pearls in time — because King Haakon VII of Norway, the bride’s great-uncle, loaned Colville his limousine! Even that royal conveyance couldn’t full conquer the royal wedding congestion, and Colville heroically sprinted part of the distance to get the pearls to the princess in time. His efforts were successful, and Elizabeth walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey with two major pieces of British royal history around her neck.

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The Queen has worn the pearls occasionally in the years since, but her pearl collection alone is pretty incredible, so these only pop up from time to time. One of the most recent major outings for the pearls was the Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace in 2012.

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On that occasion, the creamy pearls coordinated nicely with her golden dress. (The Queen Anne necklace snagged occasionally on the dress’s neckline on this occasion, making it look slightly shorter than it actually is.) Because the Queen was greeting various performers and guests throughout the evening, we even got a few unusual angles on the pearls, including this side view.

Jewel History: Rich Materials for Princess’s Wedding Dress (1947)

11.15.2017 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Detail of Hartnell’s sketch of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress (Central Press/Getty Images)

“Rich Materials for Princess’s Wedding Dress”

(originally appeared in the Nanaimo Daily Free Press, 11 Oct 1947)

LONDON — On a red satin settee and a leopard skin rug in the lush, empire-style “designing room” of the royal couturier, Norman Hartnell [1], lie the two top-secret breathtaking bales of material of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress and going-away outfits.

Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress and jewels on display, 2007 (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

As my editor signed a pledge for my integrity in keeping Princess Elizabeth’s secret for her husband until November 20, the marriage date, I can only say that the materials are indeed worthy of a royal princess.

Hartnell’s salon in Mayfair, October 1947; note that the windows are whitewashed to help keep the royal wedding dress design a secret (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The wedding dress material brought forth gushings from women reporters. And when they saw the material for the eight bridesmaids’ dresses, they said, “Not quite so gorgeous. That is the way it should be. But gorgeous enough.”

Hartnell’s sketch of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress (Central Press/Getty Images)

The press had been briefed so thoroughly about the previews of the materials that they did not bother to ask Hartnell’s secretary about the style. It had been impressed upon them that they would have to wait for the sketches to be displayed in the first week of November. A question about the prices was turned away with aghast looks [2].

Norman Hartnell sketches at his salon in Mayfair, January 1947 (Fred Ramage/Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Princess Elizabeth’s materials, for a peek at which Hartnell attendants have been approached with bribes, could not have been displayed against a more elegant background.

Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress on display, 2002 (Sion Touhig/Getty Images)

NOTES

1. Sir Norman Hartnell (1901-1979) was a British fashion designer best known for his work with Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother. His most famous creations include the Queen’s wedding and coronation dresses, the Queen Mother’s “white wardrobe,” and the wedding dresses worn by Princess Margaret; Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester; and Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. He also designed costumes for various films, including Katharine Hepburn’s wardrobe for Suddenly, Last Summer.

2. Remember that Britain was still in the midst of post-war austerity in 1947, and clothing was still being rationed. The palace was keen to avoid questions about rationing and the royal wedding, but it was eventually made public that the government had granted Elizabeth 200 extra clothing coupons for her wedding dress. Members of the public had also sent the princess their own clothing ration coupons to help pay for the dress, but those had to be returned, as using them would have been illegal. The dress was made of heavily-embroidered silk and satin; the silkworms used were from China, not Japan or Italy, two countries which had recently been Britain’s wartime enemies.

The Nizam of Hyderabad Suite

11.11.2017 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

The Nizam of Hyderabad Tiara and Necklace among Elizabeth’s wedding gifts

This month, we’re spending our Saturdays with some of the glittering wedding gifts presented to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom when she married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten. Today, we’ve got a sparkling suite of diamond jewels from Cartier, the princess’s gift from the Nizam of Hyderabad.

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When Elizabeth received the suite in 1947, the diamond and platinum floral set consisted of a tiara (which included pieces that could be removed and worn as rose brooches) and a coordinating necklace. Above, Elizabeth wears the tiara during the Norwegian state visit in June 1951. On this occasion, she paired it with other wedding gifts, including the diamond fringe necklace from the City of London and Queen Mary’s bangle bracelets.

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In 1947, Asaf Jah VII was the ruler (or Nizam) of Hyderabad, which is located in the south-central part of the subcontinent of India (which was then under British colonial rule). He was one of the richest men in the world, so he could afford to give the princess a truly spectacular wedding gift. He followed through by fulfilling most jewel-lovers’ greatest dream: he left instructions with Cartier to let the princess pick anything from their existing stock for her present. Elizabeth chose the tiara and necklace, which date to 1935. She sometimes wore the tiara and necklace together, as she did above for the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium in 1951.

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Just as often, however, she wore the jewels separately. Above, during her 1951 tour of Canada, Elizabeth paired the tiara with the necklace we discussed last week, the Greville Ruby Necklace.

During the American leg of that 1951 tour, she wore the Nizam necklace with the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara for a visit with President Truman and his family.

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The necklace has an interesting backstory. Made by Cartier in 1935, it was sold to an unknown buyer in 1936; however, it was reacquired by Cartier from that buyer the following year. The necklace also originally included additional pendants, which were removed in 1946. The piece has remained a mainstay in the Queen’s jewelry collection. In The Queen’s Diamonds, Sir Hugh Roberts described it as “The pavé-set centre with detachable double-drop pendant incorporating 13 emerald-cut diamonds and a pear-shaped drop; the chain of 38 brilliant-cut open-back collets with an elongated oval brilliant-set snap.” Elizabeth has kept it in its 1947 form, except for one small change: as with most of her necklaces, she has had the chain shortened.

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More recently, the Nizam necklace is one of the pieces of jewelry that she has loaned to her granddaughter-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge. Kate wore the necklace for the first time in public at the National Portrait Gallery in 2014. The tiara was also featured in a special exhibition at Buckingham Palace to mark Elizabeth and Philip’s 60th wedding anniversary in 2007, and we’ve got close-ups from that occasion over here.

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The tiara, however, now exists only in photographs. In 1973, the Queen decided to dismantle the piece. We don’t know precisely why, but it was taken apart at a time when HM was making subtle changes to her jewelry collection, remaking existing pieces and acquiring new ones. Unlike nearly every other tiara in her arsenal, the Nizam was not a family heirloom; it was a newer piece that she had selected herself, so perhaps she felt more comfortable altering it. Her collection lacked a ruby tiara at this point in time, because the Queen Mother had kept the Oriental Circlet in her own jewelry box after George VI’s death. So Elizabeth decided to remove the diamonds from the Nizam tiara, combining them with a cache of Burmese rubies to create the Burmese Ruby Tiara. (You can read more about the Burmese Ruby over here!)

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Three parts of the tiara were preserved, however: the rose elements that could be removed and worn as brooches. The Queen still frequently wears the largest of these brooches today, and a recent engagement offered us an excellent close-up view of the piece.