Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Victoria Melita’s Emerald Wedding Tiara

03.18.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Victoria Melita wears the emerald tiara on her wedding day in 1894 [1]

So far, we’ve seen diamonds and sapphires from the collection of Princess Victoria Melita, who was at various times during her life a princess of Edinburgh and of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a grand duchess of Hesse, and a grand duchess of Russia. Today, we’re going to shine the spotlight on the emerald tiara she wore on her first wedding day.

Victoria Melita [3]

The diamond and emerald tiara was a wedding gift to Ducky, either from both of her parents (the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who were a British prince and a Russian grand duchess) or from just her mother. She wore the tiara on the day she married her first cousin, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse, in 1894. The match was heavily promoted by their families, and even though they didn’t dislike each other, some sources suggest that Victoria Melita was actually already smitten with her second husband (and cousin), Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia, before she married Ernie. Let’s just say that there were warning signs that this royal marriage wasn’t going to work out from the start.

Regardless, the couple went through with the ceremony, much to the delight of their mutual grandmother, Queen Victoria. The bride’s aunt Vicky (who was then the Empress Frederick of Germany) noted that Victoria Melita wore “a light slender diadem of emeralds with a sprig of orange blossom stuck in behind” as a bride, pairing the emerald tiara with a veil owned by the groom’s late mother, Princess Alice [2]. (You can see her wedding jewels in the photograph at the top of this post.) The emerald tiara is similar in design to an aquamarine diadem that belonged to Ernst’s sister, Grand Duchess Ella; however, the two are distinct pieces.

The emerald tiara was part of a suite of emerald jewels given to her by her parents on the occasion. She also received a “necklace of pearls and emeralds” (which seems to be the necklace she wears in the photograph on the left above) and a “bracelet set with a large emerald” on the day [4]. Although her marriage was not a success (for all sorts of complicated reasons), she continued to wear her wedding emeralds even after her divorce from Ernst was finalized in 1901.

The tiara, along with many of the other jewels owned by Ducky’s mother and sisters, was displayed in Coburg in 1903 as a part of a charity exhibition of the family’s possessions [5]. And she was also photographed in the tiara with her second husband, Grand Duke Kirill, which means that it was still in her possession in 1905. After that, it falls off the map. In her write-up on the emeralds, Ursula speculates Ducky had the tiara broken up sometime after her second marriage, using the stones to create a larger emerald parure. Ultimately, very few of Ducky’s jewels are still around today, largely because the family had to sell many of their most valuable possessions after the Russian revolution. I think it’s safe to say that her emerald wedding tiara has also left the family’s collection, one way or another.

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped and edited version of the Hesse wedding photo, which is now in the public domain; you can see a full version of the photograph here.
2. Vicky’s comment, made in a letter to one of her daughters, is quoted at Ursula’s site.
3. Cropped version of an image in the public domain; source here.
4. Lists of Ducky’s wedding gifts from the Illustrated London News and the Graphic are excerpted here.
5. Ursula has a feature on the 1903 Coburg exhibition; you can see the emerald tiara here.

Jewel History: Royal Wedding at Windsor (1904)

02.11.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Prince Alexander of Teck and Princess Alice of Albany on their wedding day [1]

“Royal Wedding at Windsor”

(originally appeared in the New York Times on 11 Feb 1904)

LONDON, FEBRUARY 10 — Prince Alexander of Teck [2] and Princess Alice of Albany [3] were married this afternoon at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, where Queen Victoria was married on the same date in 1840 [4]. The Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by other clergy, officiated, and King Edward gave away the bride.

The whole ceremony was very elaborate and brilliant. There were no less than four processions to the chapel, the Queen of Württemberg’s [5], that of Queen Emma of the Netherlands [6], the procession of King Edward and Queen Alexandra, and that of the bride.

Wedding party of Prince Alexander and Princess Alice [7]

There was a brilliant assemblage of members of royal families, foreign princes, peers, peeresses, ministers, diplomats, and other distinguished personages, the men all in court or levee dress or uniform, and the women in evening dress. The display of jewels was magnificent. There were five royal bridesmaids, all cousins of the bride [8]. The Seventh Hussars, the bridegroom’s regiment, lined the nave. A luncheon was given subsequently in the state dining room at Windsor Castle.

The only special incident was the arrest of an alleged lunatic, who, flourishing a swordstick, molested the guests arriving from London. Windsor was decorated with flags and filled with excursionists.

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of a photograph in the public domain; source here.
2. Prince Alexander of Teck (1874-1957) was the youngest son of Prince Francis, Duke of Teck and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge; Queen Mary was his older sister. He relinquished his German titles in 1917, after which his brother-in-law, King George V, made him the Earl of Athlone.
3. Princess Alice of Albany (1883-1981) was the only daughter of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (the youngest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) and Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont. After her husband relinquished his German titles, she was known as Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.
4. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married on February 10, but at the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace in London, not at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
5. In 1904, the Queen of Württemberg was Charlotte of Schaumberg-Lippe, the second wife of Wilhelm II of Württemberg. Wilhelm II’s first wife was Princess Marie of Waldeck and Pyrmont — the aunt of Princess Alice of Albany. More importantly, the Tecks were from Württemberg; they were descendants of Duke Alexander of Württemberg, the nephew of King Friedrich I of Württemberg.
6. Queen Emma of the Netherlands, who was born Princess Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, was Princess Alice’s aunt.
7. Picture postcard of the Teck wedding party; source here.
8. The bridesmaids were Princess Mary of Wales (daughter of King George V and Princess Mary of Teck); Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont (daughter of Prince Friedrich of Waldeck and Pyrmont and Bathildis of Schaumberg-Lippe); Princess Margaret and Princess Patricia of Connaught (daughters of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia); and Princess Mary of Teck (daughter of Prince Adolphus of Teck, later the 1st Marquess of Cambridge, and Lady Margaret Grosvenor).

Margaret of Connaught’s Khedive Tiara

01.22.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Crown Princess Margareta, ca. 1908 [1]

Margaret of Connaught had a number of tiaras at her disposal during her tenure as crown princess of Sweden, but none of the others are quite as romantic and sentimental as today’s piece: the Cartier tiara given to her as a wedding gift by the Khedive of Egypt.

Margaret of Connaught [2]

The Khedive tiara’s story begins even before the piece’s creation. Margaret, the niece of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, was on a royal tour with her parents, who wanted to marry their daughters off to suitable royal spouses. They had their eye on the future king of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf, as a prospective partner for Margaret’s sister, Princess Patricia. They rendezvous-ed with Gustaf Adolf in Cairo, where he immediately fell in love — but with the wrong sister. It didn’t matter, in the end; Margaret was in love with him, too. Gustaf Adolf proposed to her during a dinner at the British consulate in Cairo, and the two were married at Windsor in 1905.

As the young couple had met in his country, it was important that the Khedive of Egypt — the governor of the country, which was ruled by the British at the time — give them a suitable wedding present. He commissioned Cartier to make this tiara for the occasion. The piece, which has alternately been described as a scroll tiara and as a tiara featuring marguerite motifs, bears considerable similarity to another piece made for the Egyptians at roughly the same time: Princess Shwikar’s tiara. That piece has never been firmly attributed to Cartier, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the same jeweler was behind both sparklers.

Margaret wore the piece during her time as Sweden’s crown princess, both as a tiara and as a dress ornament. You can see her wearing the Khedive on the bodice of her dress in the portrait shown at left above (where she wears the diamond tiara given to her by her parents as a diadem). The way that Margaret has positioned the piece in the portrait fits with its depiction in the illustrated guide to her wedding gifts (see below). When worn as a tiara, the piece is flipped so that the scroll elements are at the base.

Illustration of the tiara/ornament from Margaret of Connaught’s wedding gifts [3]

Unfortunately, Margaret had little time to experiment with her tiara collection. When she died in 1920, this tiara was one of the jewels that was inherited by her only daughter, Princess Ingrid. She brought the tiara with her to Denmark when she married Crown Prince Frederik (later Frederik IX) in 1935. Ingrid didn’t wear this piece on her wedding day [4], but it was through her influence that it has become the official wedding tiara for all of her female descendants in the years since.

Ingrid of Denmark [5]

So far, the bridal wearers of the Khedive have been Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (see here); Princess Benedikte of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (see here); Benedikte’s two daughters, Princess Alexandra (here) and Princess Nathalie (here); Queen Anne-Marie of Greece (see here); and her elder daughter, Princess Alexia (here). Anne-Marie’s younger daughter, Princess Theodora, will also be eligible to wear the tiara if she marries. After Ingrid’s death in 2000, she left the tiara to her younger daughter, Anne-Marie, the former queen of Greece. Anne-Marie has had alterations made to the base of the piece [6], so that it sits much higher now on the wearer’s head (you can clearly see these changes in wedding photos of Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, the only bride to have worn it so far after it was altered).

It will be extremely interesting to see what happens to the Khedive tiara in the next generation. Will Anne-Marie leave it to one of her daughters, who are no longer princesses of a reigning monarchy? Will it be returned to the Danes, to preserve it officially as a wedding tiara for the next generation of royal brides? (That will include three Danish princesses — Isabella, Josephine, and Athena — as well as the granddaughters of Benedikte and Anne-Marie.) Cases like the Khedive, which has both historical and familial importance, make me wish that Ingrid had followed the example of Juliana of the Netherlands and set up a foundation for her jewelry. But for now, only time will tell [7].

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of photograph in the public domain; source here. (The Grand Ladies website suggests that the photograph may have been made to advertise Margaret to potential grooms, but if the photo really was taken in 1908, that’s not possible.)
2. Portrait of Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden by Axel Jungstedt, ca. 1909; source here.
3. Detail of the illustrated newspaper guide to Margaret’s wedding gifts; a full version of the image available here.
4. Here’s an image of Frederik and Ingrid on their wedding day in 1935. While neither Margaret nor Ingrid wore the Khedive as a bridal tiara, they both wore the same Irish lace veil that Margaret had been given as a wedding gift. All of Ingrid’s female descendants, plus Crown Princess Mary, have also worn the veil on their wedding days. In a bit of morbid trivia, the same veil covered Margaret of Connaught’s body in her coffin, though the veil was removed before the coffin was closed so that it could be given to Ingrid.
5. Cropped version of photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
6. See the tiara’s new base here.
7. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in February 2013.