Sweden – Page 151

The Khedive of Egypt Tiara

06.25.2016 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

The Khedive of Egypt Tiara (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Princess 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 (Photo: Grand Ladies Site/Bain Collection)

The Khedive tiara’s story begins even before the piece’s creation. Princess 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.

Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and Margaret of Connaught (Photo: Grand Ladies Site)

Because their love story was so tied to Cairo, 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.

Crown Princess Margareta wears the piece as a tiara (left) and as a bodice ornament (right)

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 Axel Jungstedt portrait shown at right above (she’s also wearing the Connaught Diamond Tiara in the image).

The tiara in Margaret’s wedding gift list

The way that Margaret has positioned the piece in the portrait fits with its depiction in the illustrated guide to her wedding gifts above. In the illustration, the piece is pictured in bodice-ornament form. When worn as a tiara, it’s flipped so that the scroll elements are at the base.

Queen Ingrid wears the tiara (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

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, but it was through her influence that it has become the official wedding tiara for all of her female descendants in the years since.

Queen Anne-Marie wears the tiara on her wedding day (Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

So far, the bridal wearers of the Khedive have been Queen Margrethe II of Denmark; Princess Benedikte; Benedikte’s two daughters, Alexandra and Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg; Queen Anne-Marie; and her elder daughter, Princess Alexia. Anne-Marie’s younger daughter, Theodora, will also be eligible to wear the tiara if she decides to marry.

Princess Nathalie wears the tiara on her wedding day (Photo: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

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, 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).

Anne-Marie wears the tiara (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

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.

Jewels on Film: Carl Gustaf and Silvia’s Royal Wedding (1976)

06.19.2016 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia’s wedding portrait (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Happy 40th wedding anniversary to King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden. Silvia Sommerlath went from commoner to queen consort in a matter of moments on June 19, 1976, when she married Sweden’s king.

To celebrate, here’s film footage of the royal wedding. Watching the ceremony is great, but I think spotting the royals in the congregation is even more fun!

The Leuchtenberg Sapphire Tiara

06.16.2016 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

The Leuchtenberg Sapphire Tiara (Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

If you’re on the lookout today for jewels that belonged to members of the imperial family of France, you’d best look not only in the Louvre but also in the family foundation of the Bernadottes, the royal family of Sweden. Like many of their grandest pieces, the gorgeous sapphires in their collection started out in nineteenth-century France.

The tiara’s first owner, the Duchess of Leuchtenberg (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The parure’s first owner was Princess Augusta of Bavaria, the wife of Eugène de Beauharnais, the only son of Empress Joséphine of France. Augusta received the sapphires as a wedding present in 1806, and many think that the gifter was Eugène’s adopted father, Napoleon Bonaparte. If that’s the case, the set was almost certainly made by Marie-Étienne Nitot, Napoleon’s court jeweler. (The cameo parure, also owned by the Bernadottes, is also attributed to Nitot.) Augusta’s father, King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, later bestowed the Leuchtenberg ducal title on his son-in-law, hence the tiara’s name.

Queen Silvia wears the tiara, necklace, and earrings (Photo: Claudio Bresciani/AFP/Getty Images)

The parure includes a number of impressive sapphire and diamond pieces, including the tiara, a necklace, a pair of earrings, a brooch, and a set of hair ornaments. The tiara features diamond floral motifs topped by eleven sapphires. We’ve talked about the inflexibility of some tiaras, but this one is the polar opposite. The base is so flexible that the tiara lays completely flat when stored, making it both easy to transport and easy to wear. The sapphires on the tiara can also be removed, and some believe that they were at one time able to be interchanged for a set of large, pear-shaped pearls.

Queen Josefina wears the tiara (Image: Grand Ladies Site)

The Leuchtenbergs had several children, many of whom made successful dynastic marriages. One of their daughters, Amélie, became Empress of Brazil, and inherited her mother’s diamonds and emeralds. The eldest, Joséphine, married the future King Oscar I of Sweden, eventually becoming Queen Josefina of Sweden. She’s the one who inherited her mother’s sapphires, and they’ve resided in the Swedish royal vaults ever since. For several generations, the gems passed through the hands of various Bernadotte family members. Josefina’s son, King Oscar II, inherited them from his mother in 1876. Five years later, Oscar and his wife, Queen Sofia, gave the parure to their new daughter-in-law, Victoria of Baden.

Queen Victoria wears the tiara and the necklace at the wedding of Prince Carl of Denmark and Princess Maud of Wales, 1896 (Photo: Grand Ladies Site)

Victoria wore the set regularly as crown princess and as queen, and she was photographed in the tiara and the rest of the parure. But rather than leaving the sapphires to any of her children or their spouses, Queen Victoria decided to preserve the set by bequeathing it to the family’s jewel foundation on her death in 1930. This is good for a couple of reasons — the main one is that the sapphires cannot be sold, but their presence in the foundation means that they are also available for more than one member of the family to wear.

Even though they are theoretically available to all of the Bernadotte ladies, the sapphires have largely continued to be worn by Swedish queens. Queen Louise, the second wife of King Gustaf VI Adolf, made the sapphire tiara one of her signature pieces. But after her death in 1965, the country was without a queen for more than a decade. During that time, the sapphires were worn by Princess Sibylla, the mother of the current king, who served as first lady for her father-in-law. The set was also worn by Princess Birgitta at the wedding of the present king and queen in 1976.

Queen Silvia wears the tiara in 2012 (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Since then, however, the sapphires have been used exclusively by Queen Silvia. The set is majestic, beautiful, easy to wear, versatile, and historic, so it’s easy to understand why it has become one of her most-used tiaras. It’s also one of the tiaras she wears about every other year to the Nobel Prize ceremony.

Queen Silvia wears the tiara at Carl Philip’s wedding (Photo: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

She also wore it for one of the most important Swedish royal events of 2015: the wedding of her son, Prince Carl Philip. On that occasion, even amid the grand tiaras worn by other royal ladies, it definitely said, “I’m the queen!”

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