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Tiara Timeline: The Cameo Tiara

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The gorgeous bridal tiara of the Bernadottes had its start not in Sweden but at the imperial court of Napoléon. Here’s the interesting history of the Swedish royal family’s cameo parure!
Detail, Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon (1807) [source]

1804: In France, Napoléon Bonaparte is crowned emperor at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. At his side is his wife, Joséphine. Born in Martinique as the daughter of a wealthy Creole planter, Joséphine had previously been married to Alexandre de Beauharnais, a French aristocrat who was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. She is crowned empress by her husband at his coronation, and she needs a vast collection of jewelry to help her fit the part. Among these is a set of cameo jewels, apparently made for her during this period by her husband’s court jeweler, Marie-Étienne Nitot. The set includes a grand tiara in gold set with pearls and large cameos depicting the story of Cupid and Psyche. It also includes a necklace, a bracelet, and a pair of earrings.

1810: Although Joséphine had two children, Eugène and Hortense, with Alexandre, she is not able to provide Napoléon with a much-needed biological heir to the French throne. He divorces her and marries Marie Louise of Austria, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor. Joséphine relocates to the Château de Malmaison near Paris, taking her jewelry along with her.

Anne-Louis Girodet’s portrait of Hortense de Beauharnais [source]

1812: Joséphine loans the cameos to her daughter, Hortense, who had briefly been Queen of Holland during the first decade of the nineteenth century. Hortense wears the cameos in a portrait painted by Anne-Louis Girodet. The painting is the first known representation of the cameos.

1814: Joséphine dies of pneumonia. Exactly what happens to the cameos after her death is a bit unclear. Historian Trond Norén Isaksen notes that the cameo parure was not included in the inventory of Joséphine’s jewels made at the time of her death; however, writer Vincent Meylan argues that the cameos were indeed in Joséphine’s possession upon her death, and that her son, Eugène, received them when he and his sister Hortense divided up their mother’s estate. Eugène had married Princess Augusta of Bavaria in a dynastic wedding eight years earlier at the behest of Napoléon, and by 1814, he was living in Munich at the court of his father-in-law with Augusta and their children.

1817: To recognize Eugène’s loyalty, his father-in-law, King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, bestows the title of Duke of Leuchtenberg on him.

Crown Princess Josefina of Sweden and Norway [source]

1823: Eugène and Augusta’s eldest daughter, Joséphine of Leuchtenberg, marries Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden and Norway. The marriage is also a dynastic one, arranged by Oscar’s father, King Carl XIV Johan. Though Oscar is a Swedish prince, his family’s roots are just as French as Joséphine’s are. His father was born Jean Bernadotte and served as a Marshal of the Empire under Napoléon before he was elected as Sweden’s future king. Oscar’s mother, Désirée Clary, had been engaged to Napoléon until he met Joséphine de Beauharnais; in Sweden, she is known as Queen Desideria. It seems very likely that Joséphine of Leuchtenberg receives her grandmother’s cameo parure as a wedding gift from her father at this point, taking the set with her to Stockholm. She is also now known by the Swedish version of her name: Josefina.

Fredric Westin’s Bernadottes of Sweden (1837) [source]

1837: The Swedish royal family, including King Carl XIV Johan, Queen Desideria, Crown Prince Oscar, Crown Princess Josefina, and their five children, Prince Carl, Prince Gustaf, Prince Oscar, Princess Eugenie, and Prince August, is painted by Fredric Westin. In the portrait, Josefina wears her grandmother’s cameo tiara.

King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway by Erik Wahlbergson [source]

1844: King Carl XIV Johan dies, and Oscar and Josefina become King Oscar I and Queen Josefina of Sweden and Norway.

Queen Josefina of Sweden by Bertha Valerius [source]

1876: Josefina dies in Stockholm, and the cameo parure is inherited by her only daughter, Princess Eugenie. Fiercely independent and talented, Eugenie never marries, instead devoting her life to artistic pursuits and charitable causes.

Princess Eugenie of Sweden and Norway [source]

1889: Eugenie dies in Stockholm. She bequeaths the cameos to her nephew, Prince Eugen. Like his aunt, Eugen was a gifted artist; he also never married.

Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden wears the cameos, ca. 1910

1915: Because he has no spouse to wear the cameos, Eugen often lends them to another member of the Swedish royal family: Crown Princess Margareta, the wife of Eugen’s nephew, Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf. On one famous occasion, Margareta donned the tiara to wear at the wedding of her husband’s cousin, Count Carl Bernadotte af Wisborg, but stopped into her children’s nursery before leaving, giving them a living history lesson by showing them a tiara that had been worn by Empress Joséphine of France.

1932: Prince Eugen gives the cameo parure to another Swedish royal bride, Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, as a wedding present. Sibylla marries Prince Gustaf Adolf, the eldest son of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf and the late Crown Princess Margareta.



1933: Sibylla lends the cameos to her sister-in-law, Princess Ingrid of Sweden (later Queen Ingrid of Denmark). Ingrid wears the set as a part of a costume, dressing as Queen Josefina for a masquerade ball.

1947: Sibylla’s husband, Prince Gustaf Adolf, dies in a place crash in Denmark. According to Trond Norén Isaksen, Sibylla’s hair goes white shortly afterward, and she stops wearing the cameo tiara because she dislikes the way it looks against her hair.

1961: Princess Birgitta, Sibylla’s second daughter, becomes the first in a long string of Bernadotte brides to wear the tiara on her wedding day. She dons the cameos to marry Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern during her first religious wedding ceremony in Stockholm; for her second religious religious wedding, in the groom’s home country of Germany, she wears a Hohenzollern family bridal crown.

1964: Sibylla’s third daughter, Princess Désirée, wears the cameo tiara at her wedding to Baron Nils-August Silfverschiöld at Stockholm Cathedral.

1972: Princess Sibylla dies of cancer in Stockholm. She leaves the cameo parure to her son, Prince Carl Gustaf. After the death of his grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf, the following year, Carl Gustaf becomes King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

1976: King Carl XVI Gustaf marries Silvia Sommerlath. She wears the cameo tiara at their wedding at Stockholm Cathedral that June. Although much of the Swedish royal jewelry collection is a part of the Bernadotte Family Foundation, the cameo parure is the personal property of the king, and Silvia is the only person who wears it over the next three decades.

1996: Queen Silvia wears the cameos at the annual Nobel Prize ceremony in December.

2007: Queen Silvia wears the cameos during a Swedish state visit to Austria.

2010: Crown Princess Victoria, eldest daughter of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, wears the cameo tiara, earrings, and bracelet at her wedding to Daniel Westling in Stockholm Cathedral.

2014: Empress Joséphine’s cameos return to France, two centuries after her death. Queen Silvia wears the cameo set, minus the tiara, during a state visit to France; unlike most countries, France does not hold gala-style state banquets, so Silvia substitutes a brooch from the set as a hair ornament as the evening’s dress code does not call for tiaras.

Tiara Timeline: The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara

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Time for another journey back into the mists of royal history, magpies! Today, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom celebrates her 89th birthday, and in her honor, we’re charting the history of her very favorite sparkler: The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara.

December 1891: Princess Mary of Teck, the 24-year-old daughter of a German duke and a British princess, is considered by Queen Victoria to be one of the most suitable matches for her unmarried grandsons. Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, is the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. Although he had wanted to marry Princess Hélène of Orléans, her Catholicism was an obstacle that couldn’t be surmounted. Albert Victor dutifully proposes to Mary in December, and the two become officially engaged and plan to marry the following February.

January 1892: Only a few weeks after proposing, Albert Victor contracts influenza. He dies just before his 28th birthday.

May 1893: Albert Victor’s younger brother, Prince George, Duke of York, is now his father’s heir. He hasn’t just taken his brother’s place in the line of succession; he’s also become close to his brother’s fiancee. He and Mary have bonded as they mourned, and in May, he proposes. She accepts.

June 1893: Lady Eva Greville, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, forms a committee of women to raise money to buy a wedding present for Mary. The committee becomes known as the “Girls of Great Britain and Ireland.” Their appeal is so successful that they raise more than 3,000 pounds more than they need to buy her gift. They purchase an extremely versatile and lightweight tiara of diamonds set in silver and gold, made by E. Wolff and Co. on commission from Garrard. The tiara is topped with a set of 14 oriental pearls, and it comes with a second, smaller frame that allows it to be worn as a coronet. Even better, the tiara can also be taken off its frame completely and worn as a necklace. All of the components of the tiara are packaged in a custom mahogany box.

June 1893: As Wolff and Co. is finishing Mary’s tiara, a tragedy strikes: the HMS Victoria, a British battleship, accidentally collides with another ship off the coast of Tripoli and sinks, killing more than 350 sailors. Mary asks Lady Eva’s committee to donate the surplus money they collected to a fund that had been established to support the widows and children of the sailors who died aboard the sunken ship.

July 1893: George and Mary are married in a ceremony at the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace in London. Wisely, Mary chooses to wear a different tiara — the one given to her by Queen Victoria — nestled in a wreath of flowers on her wedding day. But Mary, now Duchess of York, expresses delight at the committee’s present, declaring that it is one of her “most valued wedding gifts.”

July 1897: Mary wears the smaller, coronet setting of the tiara to the famous Devonshire House Ball, which celebrates Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. As a feature of the party, the Duchess of Devonshire hired Lafayette to come and photograph the guests in a tent behind the house. The tiara is plainly visible in the photograph of Mary and George; she goes in costume as a lady from the court of Marguerite of Valois, while he goes as “the Queen’s Champion.” (Appropriately, Marguerite of Valois was portrayed by Mary’s mother-in-law, the future Queen Alexandra.)

January 1901: Queen Victoria dies. George is now the heir to the throne.

November 1901: George and Mary are created Prince and Princess of Wales.

May 1910: George’s father, King Edward VII, dies. George and Mary become King George V and Queen Mary of the United Kingdom. Wearing the tiara with its upright pearls, the new Queen Mary is painted by George C. Wilmshurst. The portrait is published in the Illustrated London News.

June 1911: Souvenir postcards for George and Mary’s coronation feature the queen wearing the tiara.

1914: Mary has the tiara altered by Garrard. The pearls are removed completely and replaced with 13 brilliant-cut diamonds (which had come from the dismantled County of Surrey Tiara). Mary has 13 of the pearls recycled by incorporating them into her new lover’s knot tiara. The base of the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara is also removed around this time so that it can be worn separately as a small diamond bandeau. Above, Mary is photographed in the tiara without its base, ca. 1920.

1935: Mary is photographed in the base-less version of the tiara by Hay Wrighton for a photographic album publication called Popular Personalities.

January 1936: George V dies, and Mary’s eldest son, David, becomes King Edward VIII.

December 1936: Edward VIII abdicates, and Mary’s second son, Bertie, becomes King George VI. Mary’s granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth, becomes the heir to the throne.

November 1947: Mary gives both the tiara and the bandeau base to Elizabeth as a wedding present. Elizabeth still reportedly calls the sparkler “Granny’s Tiara.”

May 1948: Elizabeth wears the tiara to the opera in Paris during a visit to France.

March 1950: Elizabeth wears the tiara to the Guildhall in London.

1951: Elizabeth wears the tiara in Malta.

September 1951: At a film premiere in London, Elizabeth pairs the tiara with a fur wrap.

October 1951: Elizabeth and Philip embark on a Canadian tour; she wears the tiara at the ballet in Winnepeg.

February 1952: George VI dies, and his daughter becomes Queen Elizabeth II. As queen, the tiara becomes something of a trademark piece for her. She wears it in portraits that appear on currency and stamps in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth.

June 1952: Elizabeth wears the tiara in Edinburgh during her first public appearance after her father’s funeral.

1952: Elizabeth wears the tiara to the royal film performance in Leicester Square.

October 1955: The tiara is Elizabeth’s choice for a film premiere starring another (future) royal: To Catch a Thief, featuring Grace Kelly

March 1956: The tiara accompanies Elizabeth, her mother, and her sister to the ballet at Covent Garden.

1957: Elizabeth poses in the tiara with the First Lady of France, Germaine Coty.

October 1957: Elizabeth wears the tiara to the White House during a visit to the United States.

May 1960: Elizabeth wears the tiara at a service held at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

1961: The tiara travels with Elizabeth on a trip to Pakistan.

1962: Elizabeth wears the tiara to the annual Royal Variety Performance.

November 1964: The tiara is Elizabeth’s choice for celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts.

1965: The tiara sees Maria Callas perform in Puccini’s Tosca at Covent Garden.

1967: The Queen returns to Malta and, once again, brings the tiara with her.

1969: The bandeau base is finally reattached to the tiara, bringing the piece back to its original height. Elizabeth wears the tiara on a visit to Austria in May, and you can see that the piece has increased in height in the photograph above.

1970: Elizabeth pairs the tiara with jewels from the Delhi Durbar parure at a state banquet.

May 1972: Elizabeth wears the tiara at the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium.

1975: Elizabeth wears the tiara with pieces from the Brazilian Aquamarine parure.

November 1976: Elizabeth takes the tiara with her on a visit to Luxembourg.

1977: In New Zealand, Elizabeth gives a speech wearing the tiara and the Durbar emeralds.

1979: HM pairs the tiara with rubies at the theater.

October 1980: In Morocco, Elizabeth toasts King Hassan while wearing the tiara with diamond and pearl jewelry.

February 1982: Elizabeth wears the tiara at Claridge’s Hotel in London.

November 1983: Elizabeth wears the tiara with a pearl and diamond choker in Bangladesh.

March 1985: In Portugal, Elizabeth pairs the tiara with a rare outing of the Kent amethysts.

November 1987: Forty years after receiving the tiara from her grandmother, Elizabeth poses in it with Prince Philip for a fortieth wedding anniversary portrait at Windsor.

October 1989: Photographers snap a view of the back of the tiara, showing that it is generally not worn as a complete circlet, during a banquet in Malaysia.

June 1992: Elizabeth wears the tiara with diamonds in Paris.

1993: The tiara is now a century old. Elizabeth wears it with a pink gown to a banquet in Hungary.

1996: Elizabeth wears the tiara at a gala concert in the Czech Republic.

February 2000: Alongside Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Elizabeth wears the tiara to a gala at the Natural History Museum in London.

April 2004: The tiara is Elizabeth’s choice for an important state visit to France, marking the hundredth anniversary of the Entente Cordiale.

November 2005: The tiara takes yet another trip to Malta.

May 2006: Elizabeth wears the tiara with the robes of the Order of the Bath.

May 2007: The tiara makes another trip to the White House during a state visit to the United States.

2010: Elizabeth wears the tiara during a tour of Canada.

2011: Elizabeth selects this tiara to wear at a state banquet during her
historic state visit to the Republic of Ireland. The tiara’s name takes
on extra significance during the visit, which strove to highlight the
cultural and economic ties between the two nations.

July 2014: During a state visit designed to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Elizabeth wears the tiara at a banquet in Paris.

Tiara Timeline: The Stuart Tiara

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(source)

Tiara Timeline: The Stuart Tiara

1677: In November, a royal marriage takes place at St. James’s Palace between a pair of cousins who both have close claims to the English throne. The groom, William, is the Prince of Orange; he’s the son of the late Princess Royal, and therefore the nephew of King Charles II. The bride, Mary, is the king’s niece; she’s the daughter of the Duke of York. The marriage is a strategic alliance: Mary is second in line to the throne, while William is fourth. After the wedding, the couple leaves England, settling in The Hague.

At some point after their marriage, William and Mary purchase a large, uncut diamond. They have it cut in Amsterdam, and the resulting rose-cut diamond, which weighs nearly forty carats, is set in a brooch. It becomes known as the Stuart diamond.

1685: Charles II dies without a legitimate heir, and his brother, the Duke of York, becomes King James II. Mary is now the heir to the English throne. She and her father are often at odds over political policy and personal matters; James is also a Catholic, while William and Mary are protestant.

1688: James’s wife, Mary of Modena, gives birth to a son, who displaces Mary as heir. A group of anti-Catholic Englishmen ask William to come to England, deposing James and installing Mary as queen. William agrees, arriving in England, taking command of the military, and sending James into exile; the event will later be called the “Glorious Revolution.”

1689: Mary arrives in England, bringing the Stuart diamond with her, and Parliament proclaims that she and William are co-regnant monarchs of the country. They are crowned as King William III and Queen Mary II in Westminster Abbey.

1694: Mary dies of smallpox at the age of 32. William inherits all of her property, including the Stuart diamond.

1702: William dies of pneumonia. Because he and Mary had no children, the jewels that he inherited from her are returned to the Netherlands as property of the House of Orange. The new queen, Mary’s sister Anne, tries to reclaim the property, but she fails in her efforts, and the Stuart diamond remains in the Netherlands with the Oranges.

1782: Eighty years after William III’s death, the head of the House of Orange is Prince William V. Concerned that the family’s valuable jewelry collection should remain intact, he decrees that none of the family’s jewelry can be sold without the consent of all of the members of the royal house.

Wilhelmina, Princess of Orange (source)

1795: In the wake of political turmoil following the French Revolution, William V and his family flee to exile in Britain. (Like William III, the British royals are his cousins — William’s mother, Anne, was a daughter of King George II of Great Britain.) The Stuart diamond arrives back on English shores with the family. While in England, William’s wife, Princess Wilhelmina, has Rundell and Bridge reset the Stuart diamond, which becomes a pendant on a necklace.

1815: After twenty years abroad, the Oranges are finally able to return to the Netherlands and claim the Dutch throne. William V’s son, also named William, becomes King William I, and the Stuart diamond is a part of his royal jewel collection.

1851: The Great Exhibition is held in London, and the Stuart diamond (called the “Holland Diamond” in the exhibition literature) is one of the treasures on display.

Queen Emma and Queen Wilhelmina (source)

1897: Preparations for the investiture of the young Dutch queen, Wilhelmina, are underway; she will be crowned the following year after her eighteenth birthday. Her mother, Queen Emma, orders a new tiara from Eduard Schürmann and Co. to wear at the ceremony. The new tiara features the Stuart diamond set among other stones from the family’s collection. The piece is a part of a set that becomes known as the “House Diamonds.” Here’s a good view of the Stuart Tiara, worn years later by Queen Juliana.

1960: Queen Juliana wears the tiara during a state visit to Belgium.

1967: Juliana wears the tiara to the wedding of Crown Princess Margrethe of Denmark in Copenhagen.

1972: Given its complicated Dutch/British history, the Stuart Tiara is an especially appropriate choice for Juliana to wear at Windsor Castle during a state visit to Britain. Juliana is the last Dutch queen to wear the Stuart Tiara in public. Here’s hoping we see Queen Maxima take this one out for a spin soon!