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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

The Top Ten: Maddest Tiaras

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Time for another new feature category here at The Court Jeweller: The Top Ten, in which we count down the best (and worst) of royal jewelry. Today, we’re celebrating my recent relaunch of classic posts from the Mad Hattery! blog with a rundown of my votes for the top ten Maddest Tiaras in modern royal collections. Have a glance at my picks, and then weigh in with your top ten list in the comments below!

10. Princess Madeleine’s Aquamarine Bandeau: The hunt for the maddest tiaras makes its first stop in the Bernadotte family vaults in Sweden, where this simple yet strange bandeau resides. It’s the tiara given to Princess Madeleine for her eighteenth birthday; for many years, it was one of the only tiaras she wore. The piece is actually an heirloom, but that hasn’t stopped many royal watchers from affectionately (or not?) dubbing this one “the Cyclops.”

9. Queen Fabiola’s Spanish Wedding Gift Tiara: Here’s a case where a transformable tiara can go from lovely to completely mad with a few flicks of the jeweler’s tiny screwdriver. The tiara given by General Franco to Queen Fabiola of Belgium as a wedding gift is perfectly lovely when it’s arranged as a floral wreath tiara. But when its floral elements are propped up atop a coronet, it goes from elegant quite quickly to something … else. Let’s put it this way — would anyone have been surprised if this coronet had shown up during one of Lord Snowdon’s over-the-top ’60s royal spectaculars? Nope, me neither.

8. The Aquamarine Pineflower Tiara: It’s a bit hard to see in the photo above, but Princess Anne is wearing the absolute maddest of her own tiaras at the recent Irish state banquet. This Cartier-made tiara, which includes pinecone elements mixed with large rectangular aquamarines, was once owned by the Queen Mum. Not surprisingly, it’s not been high on the “most-worn tiaras” list for either the QM or her granddaughter.

7. The Norwegian Emerald Parure Tiara: This mad tiara just goes to show that royal provenance can’t totally overcome wackiness. This emerald tiara was once owned by the Duchess of Leuchtenberg, daughter-in-law to Empress Josephine of France. It’s been worn by lots of Scandinavian royals, including the current Queen of Norway, but that still doesn’t trump the fact that the geometric stones in this one look a bit more Willy Wonka than white-tie.

6. The Burmese Ruby Tiara: A relic of the design vacuum that was the 1970s, the Tudor roses in this modern tiara unfortunately read “big red blob” far too often for this one to be anything but a mad diamond and ruby experiment gone wrong.

5. The Swedish Four-Button Tiara: Beep, beep, everybody — it’s the Jeep! I don’t care if the lights are actually antique diamond buttons (and, okay, they are), this one’s just loony.

4. Queen Sonja’s Modern Gold Tiara: It’s just never good when a queen consort’s tiara would look right at home on the set of a 20th century sci-fi flick.

3. The Chaumet Emerald Tiara: The grand ducal family of Luxembourg has some stunning pieces of jewelry tucked away in their palace vaults … and then they also have this tiara, suitable for Wonder Woman’s fanciest gala appearances.

2. Princess Astrid’s Aigrette: According to Astrid herself, she’s pretty sure she can pick up radio signals from across Europe with this puppy, and based on the appearance of these diamond antenna, I believe her.

1. Queen Margrethe’s Golden Poppies: Not so much a tiara, really, as an experience — and by “experience,” I mean a giant creepy gold headdress made of flowers and bugs. It’s another relic of the 1970s, when tiara makers appear to have been as much under the influence of various things as the rest of the population was. Above, at one of the poppies’ more recent public outings (a decade ago (!), at Frederik and Mary’s engagement dinner), Margrethe only wore a couple of the flowers strewn in her hair. But the full madness isn’t apparent until you see the whole thing. I don’t know, though — it’s Daisy the Great Dane, after all. If she’s not going to wear a truly mad tiara, who will?

So, readers, it’s your turn now to offer up your roster of the ten maddest royal tiaras out there. And when you’re done, don’t forget to drop by The Royal Roundup for some classic mad royal hattery!

Queen Margrethe’s Turquoises

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As a a reigning queen, Margrethe II of Denmark has access to a wide array of jewels, ranging from pieces that are a part of the nation’s crown jewel collections to items of personal jewelry. Today, we’re going to have a look at a little mini collection that belongs to the queen: her turquoise jewelry.

Margrethe has two sets of turquoise and diamond jewelry: an older suite and a more modern one. The older jewels were apparently inherited by Margrethe from her mother. The set includes a pair of diamond earrings with turquoise pendant stones, a large brooch (really, almost a small stomacher) that features three large turquoises set in diamonds, a smaller brooch, and a small bandeau tiara. The queen has also worn parts of the large brooch as a pendant on a diamond necklace (seen above at one of the events celebrating the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria in 2010).

The tiara’s design includes small turquoise and diamond flowers with petals, often identified as daisies (though sometimes also referred to as other flowers). The daisy motif makes a lot of sense to me, though — especially when you consider that the tiara is often said to have been a part of the jewelry collection of Margrethe’s maternal grandmother, Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden. Both grandmother and granddaughter share the nickname “Daisy,” and there are other pieces of jewelry in Margarethe’s collection that are linked with her mother and her grandmother. (The most notable is, of course, the daisy brooch we talked about recently.)

I’ve seen some speculation that the turquoise bandeau may have been a gift to Crown Princess Margareta from her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught. I’ve also seen it speculated that the turquoises in this older set may be Russian in origin and could even have been owned by members of the imperial family. (I’m not sure that either of these pieces of information is completely accurate, so I’d appreciate confirmation or refutation if you can offer it!) I’ve also never seen a reliable reference to the tiara’s maker, though I personally think it bears a significant resemblance to the daisy bandeau worn by Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway.

Regardless, we do know that the tiara was worn in a portrait by Margrethe’s mother, Ingrid, when she was a Swedish princess. That portrait has been a source of some confusion; although Ingrid wears a veil, she is wearing Swedish court dress, not her wedding gown. She did not wear a tiara at her wedding. We also know that Margrethe began wearing the piece way back in the 1960s (including an important outing during the pre-wedding celebrations for her sister, Queen Anne-Marie of Greece), though she has only started to wear it regularly for events like state banquets within the past decade.

The tiara has also been lent to others on various occasions. It was worn by Crown Princess Martha of Norway (mother of the current king) at the wedding of her sister, Astrid, to King Leopold III of Belgium in 1926. On that occasion, it must have been Martha’s cousin, Ingrid, doing the lending. In later years, the tiara has been worn by Madeleine Tengbom (maternal grandmother of Prince Richard of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, the husband of Princess Benedikte of Denmark) at her grandson’s wedding [1], and by Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark at her aunt Margrethe’s Ruby Jubilee in 2012.

Margrethe also has the turquoise and diamond Devonshire Brooch in her personal collection. This piece, which features a large turquoise surrounded by four diamonds, was a wedding gift in 1905 to Crown Princess Margareta from the Duchess of Devonshire.

One of the newer turquoise pieces in the queen’s collection is the large turquoise brooch made for her in 2000 by Torben Hardenberg. The brooch has a mythological motif in its design, which includes an image of Diana, goddess of the hunt, and a deer. The piece is made of three large turquoises (said to have come from the Danish royal family’s collection), gold, silver, and diamonds. Margrethe wears this brooch with a coordinating pair of modern turquoise and diamond earrings that have detachable pendant sections.

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Photos of Crown Princess Martha and Madeleine Tengbom wearing the tiara can be found here.