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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Royal Bonus: Singapore State Visit Schedule

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The Queen during the 2014 French state visit

This week, the Queen welcomes President Tan of Singapore to London for a four-day state visit. State visits always bring out significant glitter in Britain; here’s a guide to where and when you can expect to see members of the royal family during the visit. (The full visit program is available here!)

William and Kate, August 2014

Tuesday: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are scheduled to greet President and Mrs. Tan at their hotel and escort them to Horse Guards Parade for the ceremonial welcome ceremony. Kate, of course, has been ill at the beginning of her second pregnancy, and I imagine her attendance will depend on her health on Tuesday morning. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will be waiting at Horse Guards Parade (and often Charles and Camilla also attend these ceremonies), and then they’ll take their guests to Buckingham Palace for lunch.

Table setting during the 2013 UAE state visit

After visits to Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster, the Queen will hold a state banquet at Buckingham Palace. Numerous members of the royal family usually attend (not announced beforehand), though we almost always only get pictures of the Queen and perhaps Camilla or Anne. If William and Kate go to the banquet, I have a sneaking feeling we’ll see a few more images.

The Gloucesters at the Guildhall banquet during the 2009 Indian state visit

Wednesday: The Duke of York will be escorting the President and his wife to various locations on Wednesday, and then in the evening, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester will attend a banquet with their guests at the Guildhall in London. This is one of the best chances we get every year to see parts of the massive Gloucester jewelry collection in action!

Farewell ceremony during the 2014 Irish state visit

Thursday: The Queen and Prince Philip will bid farewell to President and Mrs. Tan at Buckingham Palace. President and Mrs. Tan will then head to Bristol for a number of activities.

Friday: No royals will be involved in the final day of the visit, which includes a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

The Queen during the 2013 South Korean state visit

There will be posts about the visit’s jewels here on Wednesday and Thursday, so look forward to that! As for now, three burning questions for all of you: Which tiara and jewels will the Queen wear for the state banquet? (Just as an FYI: the sash of the Queen’s order from Singapore, the Order of Temasek, is red and white.) Which jewelry will we see Birgitte Gloucester wear at the Guildhall? And which other members of the family will we see at the banquet on Tuesday evening?

Reader Mailbag: The Queen Mother’s Bandeau

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Our very own Deb W. sent in a question recently about a bandeau worn by the Queen Mother:

While watching a video about George VI and Queen Elizabeth, I was riveted by a tiara on the Queen Mother that I believe I have never seen before!  Could you give help identifying it?

Thanks for the question, Deb! I was equally intrigued by the piece, which you can see at around the 2:36 mark in this YouTube clip from King George VI and Elizabeth: A Royal Love Story (2012). (Note: all of the still images in this post are screen captures from that clip.)

The documentary does not offer a specific date for the clip featuring
the bandeau, though it does show it during the discussion of the
abdication crisis of the mid-1930s. Bertie and Elizabeth are clearly
attending a white-tie event; the man standing beside them appears to be
wearing robes with the chain of a chivalric order.

The piece that Elizabeth wears is a bandeau made up of three parallel rows of gemstones. The Queen Mum had a number of bandeau-style tiaras, including the Strathmore Rose and the double-row meander that has been worn most recently by Princess Anne. But this piece is a different one: a convertible piece of jewelry. In the 1920s, Bertie bought his new wife a set of art-deco bracelets from Cartier. Each of the five bracelets in the set features a different gemstone: one with sapphires, one with emeralds, one with rubies, and two with diamonds. This bandeau is three of those deco bracelets worn together on a frame; here’s an image of what the piece looks like in bandeau-form. She wore the bandeau on at least one other occasion, a 1933 trip to Covent Garden, pairing it with pearls.

The bracelets are still around today and are in the collection of the Queen. She wears them occasionally, but to my knowledge, the Queen Mum is the only member of the family who has worn the bandeau in public. You can see a very clear image of all five of them in one of my favorite royal books of last year, Angela Kelly’s Dressing the Queen.

Saturday Sparkler: Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s Daisy Bandeau

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At the state banquet in Norway this week, Crown Princess Mette-Marit wore a tiara that has been her signature piece of jewelry since her wedding day more than a decade ago: a delicate bandeau tiara featuring daisy designs studded with diamonds.

Mette-Marit wears the tiara at the Danish royal wedding, 2004

The tiara, which fits in perfectly with Mette-Marit’s minimalist Nordic style, was made in 1910. Exactly how the family got their hands on the
sparkler has never been made clear. Some think they may have bought the
piece from Garrard in London, but the family has never released any
information on the maker or the means by which it was acquired. (I have always seen a major resemblance between this tiara and another Scandinavian sparkler: Queen Margrethe’s turquoise bandeau.)

Mette-Marit wears the tiara at Princess Martha Louise’s wedding, 2002

Some have speculated that the bandeau is actually the same tiara worn by Cate Blanchett in the 1999 film An Ideal Husband. It’s certainly possible that the pieces could be the same: film companies often borrow real jewels for productions. Either the film features an extremely similar piece (or a copy), or Cate’s movie tiara ended up on an actual princess shortly after the movie was released.

Mette-Marit on her wedding day, 2001

Regardless of the way that the tiara made it into the Norwegian vaults, we know for sure that it was a wedding gift to Mette-Marit from her
new in-laws, King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway, in 2001. She wore the tiara on her wedding day, and although she’s worn two other tiaras since (the family’s amethyst tiara and their copy of Queen Maud’s pearl tiara), this is the tiara that she’s worn most frequently since then.

Mette-Marit wears the tiara at the Luxembourg royal wedding, 2012

The bandeau is undoubtedly easier to
wear than most grand tiaras, so comfort is probably a factor, along with
sentimental wedding/family reasons. It would not surprise me even a
little bit, though, if this tiara is eventually passed along to her
daughter, Princess Ingrid Alexandra. It seems like a perfect first tiara
for a future queen.