Saturday Sparkler

Princess Soraya’s Sunburst Tiara

03.24.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary on their wedding day, 1951 (Wikimedia Commons)

This Saturday’s sparkler takes us back to the ultra-glam days of the public face of the Iranian monarchy in the 1950s. Here’s a look at the diamond and emerald sunburst tiara worn by Princess Soraya, a queen-turned-movie star.

Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary was the second wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Their whirlwind romance was arranged by the Shah’s sister, Princess Shams, who met Soraya in London. The teenaged Soraya, daughter of an Iranian diplomat and his German wife, went to Tehran and was engaged to the Shah within days. He presented her with a 22 carat diamond engagement ring.

AFP/Getty Images

The wedding was scheduled for December 1950, but Soraya suddenly became ill. It was typhoid. The illness left her so weak that, when the wedding went ahead in February 1951, Soraya had difficulty bearing the weight of her enormous Christian Dior wedding gown. Vincent Meylan explains, “Minutes before the ceremony, the Shah and one of his aides used scissors to cut away eight meters of the train, in order to relieve Soraya of some of the weight. Relieved, the new Queen of Iran could just about remain standing during the reception that followed the religious ceremony.”

As you can see from this footage of Soraya’s arrival for the wedding ceremony, she did not wear a tiara for the wedding itself. Instead, she wore a Juliet cap that was embellished with gems.

Wikimedia Commons

For the wedding reception and dinner that followed, however, Soraya donned a suite of modern emerald and diamond jewels.

Here’s a look at Soraya’s parure. The maker of the set appears to be unknown, though it has some echoes of the diamond parure worn by her predecessor, Queen Fawzia. (That suite was made by Van Cleef and Arpels.) A similar all-diamond tiara was also worn by Princess Grace of Monaco.

The small diamond and emerald tiara sparkled among the sumptuous surroundings during the wedding reception.

And here, we get a glimpse of the back of the tiara, as Soraya and her groom move through the crowds at the event.

Soraya and the Shah’s relationship, though arranged and swift, apparently was something of a love match. But it didn’t last. The Shah desperately needed an heir, and when they discovered that Soraya was infertile, the couple divorced in 1958. Soraya was given the title of “princess,” but she decided to leave Iran altogether, settling in France. She even embarked on a brief film career.

Soraya’s emerald and diamond parure, however, stayed behind in Iran. It was worn by several other members of the family, including the Shah’s third wife, Empress Farah, and his daughter, Princess Shahnaz. Today, the suite resides in the Central Bank in Tehran, where it is on display with the rest of the country’s crown jewels.

The Dufferin and Ava Shamrock Tiara

03.17.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

L. Waldorf/Evening Standard/Getty Images

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, magpies! To celebrate the holiday, we’re spending today with one of the sparkliest shamrock tiaras around: the diamond and pearl tiara worn by the Marchionesses of Dufferin and Ava.

The tiara comes by its distinctive shamrock design honestly, as it belongs to a family of Anglo-Irish aristocrats. The first wearer of the piece was Hariot Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. Born Hariot Rowan-Hamilton, she married a distant cousin, Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the 5th Baron Dufferin and Claneboye, in 1862. (Frederick later received two title upgrades, becoming Earl of Dufferin and then Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.)

The diamond and pearl tiara was commissioned around the time of their wedding. Hariot often paired the tiara with a suite of diamond star jewelry, as seen in the illustration above by Charles William Walton.

Wikimedia Commons

She’s also wearing the stars with the shamrock tiara in this photographic portrait, which was taken by Bourne and Shepherd around 1885. Hariot needed a substantial jewelry box, as her husband served as both Viceroy of India and Governor-General of Canada during Queen Victoria’s reign.

Even after Lord Dufferin’s retirement from government service, Hariot’s tiara sparkled on the social scene. One London paper described her appearance at an 1891 ball given by the King and Queen of Italy: “The Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava wore pearl-grey silk, embroidered elaborately in silver. On her head she wore a tiara of shamrocks in diamonds, and across the bodice of her dress gleamed a number of Orders.”

A. Hudson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

In the twentieth century, the tiara became a favorite of Maureen, wife of Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. Born Maureen Guinness, she was a granddaughter of the 1st Earl of Iveagh and an heiress of the Guinness brewing fortune. In June 1935, five years after her wedding to Lord Dufferin, Maureen wore the tiara for the State Opening of Parliament. Note that she tipped the tiara backward, wearing it almost like a headband, to make it fit better with the fashionable hairstyles of the era.

Fox Photos/Getty Images

Maureen also wore the tiara at one of the last glamorous pre-war State Openings of Parliament, held in November 1938. Sadly, the war would make Maureen a widow; Basil died while serving in Japan in May 1945, shortly before his 36th birthday.

L. Waldorf/Evening Standard/Getty Images

In July 1952, Maureen wore the tiara for a debutante ball given at the Hurlingham Club. She was accompanied by her daughters, Lady Perdita and Lady Caroline. Caroline, a writer and novelist, became equally well-known for her marriages to the artist Lucien Freud and the poet Robert Lowell.

It was at Caroline’s coming-out party that Maureen and the shamrock tiara were involved in a rather unfortunate incident. Caroline’s daughter, Ivana Lowell, explained in her memoirs, “At my mother’s coming-out ball, attended by Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, my grandmother ‘overserved’ herself champagne and slipped on the dancefloor, cracking the priceless shamrock-shaped family tiara. She never drank again.”

Photo licensed to The Court Jeweller; DO NOT REPRODUCE.

Repaired and back in sparkling shape, the tiara’s next prominent wearer was Maureen’s daughter-in-law. Lindy Guinness married her fourth cousin, Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, in a sparkling Westminster Abbey ceremony in 1964. “Lindy with the glitter of her copper hair and the famous Dufferin and Ava tiara of shamrocks formed of huge diamonds making a halo under her pearly tulle veil, smiled serenely on the arm of her handsome father,” wrote columnist Eleanor Lambert. Royal guests at the wedding included the Aga Khan (whose mother was once married to Lindy’s father), Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaretha of Sweden and John Ambler, and Princess Alexandra and Angus Ogilvy.

Sheridan and Lindy had no children. They had married in spite of Sheridan’s homosexuality, and when he died in 1988, the marquessate went with him. Today, Lindy is still alive and managing the family estate in Northern Ireland, Clandeboye. The tiara, however, lives in London: the family has loaned it to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it is on display in the museum’s fabulous jewelry rooms.

The Antique Pearl Tiara

03.10.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Michel Porro/Getty Images

The glamorous Queen Maxima of the Netherlands has sported an array of tiaras from the Dutch royal family’s vast jewel collection, but back in 2001, she selected her very first tiara from the family’s stash: the base of the Antique Pearl Tiara.

Anna Pavlovna wears her pearl tiara in an 1849 portrait (Grand Ladies Site)

The tiara, which is owned by the Dutch royal family, is sometimes called the Pavlovnik pearl tiara — that’s because Anna Pavlovna, the queen consort of Willem II of the Netherlands, once had a tiara quite a lot like it. Exactly what happened to that older tiara is unclear. (Anna Pavlovna’s pearl tiara is the one worn in the portrait above.)

LISE ASERUD/AFP/Getty Images

The current Antique Pearl Tiara, which was made in 1900, was designed to mimic the shape of the original Pavlovnik tiara. The large, pear-shaped pearls that sit upright in the tiara are even older than the piece itself. They belonged to Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, a seventeenth-century Dutch princess who shares her name with Maxima’s eldest daughter, Catharina-Amalia, the current Princess of Orange.

Princess Irene wears the tiara in 2013 (ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP/Getty Images)

Queen Wilhelmina was the first wearer of this pearl tiara, and it has been worn by all Dutch queens since then. Queen Juliana inherited the piece from her mother in 1962. She placed the tiara in the family’s jewel foundation, ensuring that all future queens of the Netherlands will also be able to wear it. Since then, Princess Beatrix and two of her sisters, Princess Margriet and Princess Irene, have also donned the tiara.

Anthony Harvey/Getty Images

Although the tiara is almost always worn with Amalia’s pearls, Queen Maxima first wore the tiara without them. Her very first tiara outing happened before she was even a princess: she wore the pearl tiara (sans pearls) to the wedding of Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway in 2001. She also wore the base of the tiara solo during a 2003 visit from the Italian president. The base of the tiara has also been worn without its pearls by Princess Viktoria, the wife of the king’s cousin, Prince Jaime of Bourbon-Parma.

Today, Maxima wears the complete piece; notably, she chose it for the striking portrait released to mark her fortieth birthday in 2011, and she’s continued to wear it since becoming the nation’s queen consort in 2013.

Note: This is an updated version of an earlier post, with new text and images.