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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Easter Sunday Jewels 2016

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Time for a look at the jewels worn by the royals to celebrate Easter Sunday across Europe!

In Palma de Mallorca, the Spanish royal family gathered to attend mass. Queen Letizia wore an interesting pair of chunky gold earrings with her bright pink coat.

Queen Sofia donned her usual layered necklaces, including one that features tiny Easter eggs. She also added a gold brooch to her patterned coat.

At Windsor, the British royals gathered for their traditional service at St. George’s Chapel. The Queen wore one of her favorite brooches: the Frosted Sunflower Brooch.

The Yorks were in attendance, but as per usual, Beatrice wore no jewels while Eugenie wore a pair of drop earrings. I’ve not read a positive ID of the earrings, but their shape reminds me quite a lot of Monica Vinader’s pieces.

The Countess of Wessex wore a pair of trendy back-to-front earrings with a darker front stone and a pearly back stone.

Sophie’s daughter, Lady Louise, also wore a bit of jewelry at the service: a necklace with a pendant shaped like a horse.

Princess Anne wore the same gold brooch — shaped like a loosely-knotted ribbon — that she wore last year for the ANZAC Day service in London.

Anne’s daughter-in-law, Autumn Phillips, wore a classic pair of pearl stud earrings to church.

Now that they’re no longer reigning, King Albert II and Queen Paola of Belgium appear to be spending quite a bit of time in her native Italy. On Easter Sunday, they attended mass in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. Paola wore pearl earrings — and you’ll note that she’s stopped exercising the privilege du blanc (the right of a Catholic queen to wear white when meeting the pope) since her husband’s abdication.

Kate’s Jewelry Box: Diamond and Aquamarine Earrings

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Time for a new Sunday feature, everyone! Each week, we’ll be peeking into the Duchess of Cambridge’s jewelry box to see some of the glittering pieces she’s worn since joining the royal family. Today we’re kicking things off with her diamond and aquamarine earrings.

The earrings, which are made of 18K white gold, feature oval aquamarine drops surrounded by diamonds in a pear-shaped setting, suspended from five smaller round diamonds. The maker of the earrings has not been identified.

Kate wore the earrings for the first time during the Cambridges’ Diamond Jubilee tour in 2012. She debuted them at an event held on September 12 at the residence of the British High Commissioner, Eden Hall, in Singapore.

Two days later, we got a better look at the same pair of earrings, worn at two separate engagements in Kuala Lumpur. First, Kate wore the earrings to visit the Assyakirin Mosque and to go on a walkabout; later in the day, she wore the same pair for a tea party at the British High Commissioner’s residence.

The tea party gave us a brief glimpse of the shape of the backing of the earrings.

The earrings appeared again in April 2013, when Kate visited the National Portrait Gallery to attend a reception for one of her patronages, The Art Room.

During the 2014 tour of Australia and New Zealand, Kate donned the earrings for Easter Sunday service at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney.

In June 2015, Kate selected the earrings for Trooping the Colour.

Kate paired the earrings with the Dacre Brooch for a service marking the 75th anniversary of the RAF Air Cadets in February 2016.

A few weeks later, Kate wore the earrings again to attend the annual Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey.

Saturday Sparkler: The Aquamarine Pineflower Tiara

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Today’s aquamarine tiara is one that generally falls into either “love it” or “hate it” camps: the British aquamarine tiara with pine cone/flower motifs that is owned today by Princess Anne.

The tiara itself dates back nearly a century to Anne’s grandparents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The king commissioned Cartier to make the tiara for his wife as an anniversary present in the 1940s. She was photographed in it a few times, but it was never used as much as many of her other jewels. In 1973, Elizabeth (by then better known as the Queen Mother) gave the tiara to her granddaughter, Princess Anne, as a wedding gift.

Older photographs of the tiara compared with more current pictures make it clear that changes were made to the piece some time after Anne took possession of it. The large circular element in the center of the tiara was removed; today, one of the large rectangular aquamarines sits in the center of the piece.

Anne still wears the tiara occasionally, including at the Irish state banquet in 2014. To my knowledge, this is one of the only royal tiaras (maybe one of the only pieces of royal jewelry, period) that uses pine cones as a central motif. Pine cones are a symbol of fertility, which is always a good thing in marital terms, I suppose. But Anne’s tiara isn’t the only British piece to include tree-parts in its design: remember that the Duchess of Cambridge wore earrings to her wedding that included tiny acorns in their design.