Saturday Sparkler

The Snowdon Floral Tiara

03.23.2019 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

ADRIAN CLACK/AFP/Getty Images

Spring has sprung here at TCJ headquarters, and to celebrate, I’ve got a look at one of my favorite British royal floral tiaras: the Snowdon Floral Tiara.

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The tiara began its life as a trio of diamond floral brooches, offered to Princess Margaret as a wedding gift by Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960. Above, she wears one of the brooches for a visit to the Stork Margarine factory in Cheshire in June 1962.

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Here’s a closer view of one of the brooches from that engagement. The brooches feature diamond-set petals and leaves set on branches. The naturalistic elements of the brooches are designed with edges that look sort of “sharp” from a distance — they’re definitely not soft, romantic floral designs.

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Margaret continued to wear the brooches, usually for evening occasions. It’s tough to be sure, thanks to the quality of photographs from the era, but I believe Margaret is wearing one of the brooches at her shoulder in this photo, taken at the Queen’s 60th birthday celebrations at Covent Garden in April 1986.

ADRIAN CLACK/AFP/Getty Images

Eight years later, the brooches were transformed into a new piece of jewelry: a tiara for Margaret’s daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones. She wore the sparkler at her wedding to Daniel Chatto in July 1994. Wartski combined the brooches into a new floral tiara specifically for Sarah to wear on the day. Sarah chose to augment the diamonds with a wreath of greenery, adding a nifty whiff of genuine nature to the diadem.

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I’m going to speculate that Margaret actually gave this tiara to her daughter as a wedding gift. Sarah was photographed wearing one of the component brooches during the celebration of the golden wedding anniversary of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1997, five years before Margaret’s death. It would make sense that Margaret passed along a wedding present from Sarah’s father to Sarah on her own wedding day. Sarah also wore one of the brooches for her mother’s funeral in February 2002.

It seems that Sarah still owns the brooches today, as we’ve since seen them on another member of the Armstrong-Jones family: Lady Frances, the late Lord Snowdon’s daughter from his second marriage. Sarah loaned the floral brooches to her sister for her wedding in 2006, and Frances wore them in her hair for the occasion.

The Prussian Clover Coronet

03.16.2019 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Wikimedia Commons

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, so of course I needed to bring you a suitable sparkler this Saturday! Here’s a closer look at the intriguing clover coronet from the former imperial family of Germany.

Augusta Victoria wears the coronet, ca. 1913 (Wikimedia Commons)

This striking clover and trefoil diadem was designed by a royal who wasn’t primarily known for his interest in the aesthetics of jewels: Kaiser Wilhelm II. He commissioned the coronet, which featured shamrock and clovers, from Koch in 1906 as a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary gift for his wife, Kaiserin Augusta Victoria.

Augusta Victoria wears the tiara in a portrait by de Laszlo, ca. 1908 (Wikimedia Commons)

August Victoria (who was always called “Dona” by her family) was photographed in the piece; she also wore it in a portrait painted by Philip de László in 1908.

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After the family was exiled to the Netherlands in the aftermath of World War I, they managed to keep this piece in their collection. Above, Princess Kira of Prussia wears the coronet in April 1956 in Munich during the wedding celebrations for Archduke Ferdinand Karl of Austria and Countess Helene of Toerring-Jettenbach. In the ensuing decades, however, the tiara was altered. Parts of the tiara were removed to create two additional tiaras. In its current form, the clover coronet is often featured in various museum exhibitions.

Princess Birgitta, escorted by Prince Bertil, wears the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen Coronet for her German wedding to Johann Georg of Hohenzollern in Sigmaringen, May 1961 (Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy)

As an aside: there’s a similar — but not the same! — coronet in the collection of another branch of the German royal family, the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringens. It was worn by Princess Birgitta of Sweden and Hohenzollern during her German marriage ceremony in 1961.

Queen Louise’s Diamond Tiara

03.09.2019 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Princess Margaretha wears Queen Louise’s Diamond Tiara, May 1957 (Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy)

We’ve talked at length here on the blog about the magnificent gems owned and worn by the Bernadotte family in Sweden. But they have a few petite royal tiaras in their jewelry boxes, too, including the diamond scroll tiara worn by the king’s sisters.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy

The tiara, which is made of diamonds, originally belonged to another Swedish royal lady: Queen Louise. Born as Princess Louise of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she became Lady Louise Mountbatten when her family renounced their German titles in 1917. The renunciation didn’t affect her royal prospects. At St. James’s Palace in 1923, she married Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, the widower of her cousin, Princess Margaret of Connaught. When her husband ascended to the throne as King Gustaf VI Adolf, Louise became a queen.

Louise wears her diamond tiara, ca. 1920s (Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy)

Specific provenance information about Louise’s diamond scroll tiara has proven tough to come by, but I’d wager that it was made around the time she was married, judging by the Art Deco-esque style of the tiara. During her lifetime, she wore the tiara both atop her head and across her forehead in ’20s bandeau style.

Margaretha (escorted by Prince Wilhelm) wears the tiara for a state banquet in Stockholm in honor of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, May 1957 (Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy)

Later in her life, Louise loaned the tiara to her husband’s four granddaughters. All four of the Haga Princesses — Margaretha, Birgitta, Desiree, and Christina — have been photographed wearing the tiara.

Desiree (with Nobel laureate Sir John Eccles) wears the tiara for the Nobel Prize Banquet, December 1963 (Keystone Pictures/Zuma Press)

But Desiree was ultimately the one who received the tiara as a personal gift. In 1964, the year before Louise died, Princess Desiree married Baron Niclas Silfverschiöld. It’s said that the tiara was a wedding gift to Desiree from her grandfather and step-grandmother.

Desiree (with Niclas) wears the tiara for the annual King’s Dinner in Stockholm, December 1991 (Roger Tillberg/Alamy)

Desiree has worn the tiara at major royal occasions, including the wedding of her cousin, Princess Benedikte of Denmark, in 1968, and the wedding of her sister, Princess Christina, in 1974. More recently, she chose the tiara for her brother’s 70th birthday celebrations in Stockholm in 2016.

Note: This is an expanded and updated version of a previous post.