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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

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?

Saturday Sparkler: The Henckel von Donnersmarck Tiara

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When you’re the wife of one of the richest men in the world, it only seems fair that you should be given a truly remarkable tiara. But I’ll bet even Katharina Henckel von Donnersmarck never predicted that her emerald and diamond tiara would one day be the most expensive tiara ever sold at auction.

Katharina received the tiara from her husband, Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. The Henckel von Donnersmarcks are an old German noble family; by the end of the nineteenth century, they were the second wealthiest family in the entire country. (Second only to the Krupps — ever heard of a little gem called the Krupp diamond???)

Guido made his fortune as an industrialist, and he could certainly afford to keep the women he loved dripping in jewels. His first wife, Pauline, was a famous French courtesan who was better known as “La Païva.” Guido was obsessed with her, even after her death — so much so that, rumor has it, he kept her body in a large glass container of embalming fluid, weeping over her corpse each night. As one does, I suppose.

Perhaps a tiara made from some of the world’s rarest emeralds was a mea culpa from Guido to his second wife, Katharina? After all, she did have to put up with a corpse-worshipping spouse. Whatever the motive behind the gift, the tiara is undoubtedly a stunner. It was made at the turn of the twentieth century, perhaps the work of Chaumet.

The eleven emeralds weigh more than 500 carats, and they supposedly once belonged to Empress Eugénie of France (there are various theories about how Guido got the emeralds, but he had a history with Eugénie’s jewels — he once bought pearls from her collection for La Païva). The base of the tiara features a series of large cushion-cut diamonds resting atop a row of diamond laurels.

When the family decided to sell their tiara in 1979, they turned to Sotheby’s; it was purchased that November by a private buyer. And when that owner decided to sell, it was Sotheby’s again who handled the sale. Everyone expected the tiara to fetch a bundle — the pre-auction estimates were for between five and ten million dollars.

But when the gavel fell on this lot in 2011, a private buyer had splashed out a whopping $12.7 million on Katharina’s tiara. It was a world record price for a tiara sold at auction. We don’t know who purchased the piece, but it’s suspected that the buyer hails from North America. Here’s hoping he or she will want to loan the tiara to a museum some day soon so the rest of us can ogle the emeralds too!

Saturday Sparkler: The Iveagh Tiara

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When tiara lovers today hear the phrase “wedding gift to Queen Mary,” you can almost bet that their thoughts turn quickly to one of her most famous sparklers, the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara. But that wasn’t the only tiara that Mary was given to celebrate her marriage to the future King George V — today’s sparkler, the Iveagh Tiara, was also included in her nuptial jewelry haul.

(source)

The tiara takes its name from the couple who gave it to Mary: Lord and Lady Iveagh, Irish aristocrats who would eventually become an earl and a countess. The Iveaghs were members of the famed Guinness family, and the tiara’s name is pronounced like their Irish title: either as “eye-vee,” like the plant, or “eye-vah.” The Iveaghs’ gift was well-used by the new princess. Unusually, Mary wore this tiara throughout her lifetime without making any radical changes to its form — a rarity for a piece owned by a queen who loved to experiment with her jewels.

When Mary died in 1953, the tiara was inherited by her daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Gloucester. Princess Alice wore it during her tenure as duchess, eventually passing it along to her own daughter-in-law, Birgitte, who is the wife of the current duke. The tiara’s home with the Gloucesters and its delicate floral design has earned it another name; you’ll sometimes see the piece called the “Gloucester Leafage” tiara.

In 2008, the tiara adorned the head of another Gloucester woman: Lady Rose Windsor, the daughter of the current duke and duchess. She wore it at her wedding to George Gilman, which took place in the Queen’s Chapel at St. James’s Palace. Since then, the tiara has remained out of sight, as Birgitte tends to wear other pieces to events like state banquets. I’m hopeful that she’ll return this piece to the rotation, as its balanced, kokoshnik-style design and delicate-yet-solid diamonds make it one of the loveliest in the Gloucester collection.