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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Prince Albert’s Brooch(es)

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Among the magnificent jewels worn by our Magpie of the Month, Princess Anne, few have as exciting a British royal provenance as her sapphire and diamond brooch. Although some of the details about this piece are murky, it seems very likely that it originates with one of the most influential of her ancestors: Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria.

Before we get to Anne’s brooch, we need to set the stage with a little backstory about the piece that it was supposedly modeled on. The day before their wedding in 1840, Albert offered a gift to his soon-to-be bride. The bauble, a sapphire and diamond brooch set in gold, was received by Victoria with enthusiasm. In her diary, she noted that Albert had given her “a splendid brooch, a large sapphire set round with diamonds, which is really quite beautiful” [1].

Victoria in her wedding ensemble, painted by Winterhalter in 1847 (source)

Victoria was so enamored with her new brooch that she wore it on her wedding gown the following day, pairing it with a demi-parure of jewels made out of diamonds that had been given to her by the Sultan of Turkey. Leslie Field describes the brooch as “a large oblong sapphire surrounded by twelve round diamonds” [2]; the Royal Collection adds that the diamonds are “mounted in open-backed collets” [3]. The Royal Collection also notes that the maker of the brooch is not known; it could have been made either in England or in Albert’s native Germany.

Victoria by Winterhalter (source)

For the next twenty years, Victoria wore the sapphire brooch regularly. Field points out that she even posed in the brooch in a lithograph that was widely and cheaply distributed to her subjects [4]. But as was the case with so many of Victoria’s jewels, the brooch was rarely worn after Albert’s death in 1861. Even so, Victoria always retained a clear sense of the piece’s significance, and it was one of the items that she designated as an heirloom of the crown in her will.

(source)

In Britain, jewels that are earmarked as “heirlooms of the crown” are specifically intended for the use of queens regnant and consort, and indeed, Prince Albert’s brooch has been worn by all four of the women who subsequently held those positions. Queen Alexandra wore the brooch (along with virtually every other jewel in the kingdom) pinned to her gown at her coronation in 1902. You can just see the sapphire brooch at the edge of the Alexandra’s neckline in this photo; the piece is partially obscured by the ropes of pearls.

Subsequent queens — Mary, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth II — have used the brooch mostly for daytime occasions. Above, Elizabeth II wears the brooch during the 2013 Royal Maundy service.

But the influence of Albert’s wedding gift goes even further than that. It’s said that additional brooches were made as copies of the original, although sources differ on how many. One of these brooches may be the sapphire and diamond brooch worn today by Princess Anne. Suzy Menkes mentions the copies twice in her book on British royal jewels. In her chapter on Victoria’s jewelry, Menkes states that “Prince Albert made copies of the brooch for his own daughters, and the Queen has given one of these to the Princess Royal” [5]. Later in the book, she notes, “The Princess Royal wears one of the copies of Queen Victoria’s brooch that Prince Albert had made for his elder daughters. When one came on the market, the Queen bought it back for her own daughter” [6].

So how many copies were made, and for which of Victoria and Albert’s daughters? It’s possible there were several made, but the Royal Collection suggests that there was actually only one additional brooch made, and that it was made for Victoria herself, not for any of the princesses. According to the RC, Albert had another sapphire brooch made in 1845 as a present for the Queen’s twenty-sixth birthday; they quote her diary entry on the subject, in which she describes the gift as “a beautiful single sapphire brooch, set round in diamonds, much like the beauty he gave at our marriage, only not quite so large” [7].

Like the first sapphire brooch, the information about the second piece’s creation is unclear. The Royal Collection speculates that the maker could be Hunt and Roskell, Garrards, or Kitching and Abud, based on purchases made at those jewelry houses by the prince around the same time. We do know, however, that this second sapphire brooch did eventually find its way into the collection of one of Victoria and Albert’s daughters. It was inherited by their third daughter, Princess Helena, wife of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.

None of Helena’s children had any legitimate offspring of their own. If any of them inherited the brooch, it’s certainly possible that it was auctioned at some point. The provenance of Princess Anne’s sapphire brooch has never actually been commented upon by official sources; it’s possible that her brooch is the one that belonged to Helena, or it might ultimately be a completely different piece altogether.

Either way, it’s one of the most impressive and eye-catching pieces in her jewelry arsenal, and you’ll sometimes see her wearing it alongside another important royal jewel: the diamond, sapphire, and pearl choker that once belonged to Marie Feodorovna of Russia.

NOTES AND CREDITS
1. See the Royal Collection website on the piece, from the 2010 Victoria and Albert exhibition.
2. Leslie Field, The Queen’s Jewels, p. 150.
3. See the Royal Collection website.
4. Field, p. 150.
5. Menkes, The Royal Jewels, p. 9.
6. Menkes, p. 156.
7. See the Royal Collection website.

Birthday Jewels: Princess Anne of the United Kingdom

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The royals are firmly in vacation-mode right now, readers, so I’m postponing our weekly jewel news post until there’s actually some jewel news to share! Instead, today we’re celebrating the birthday of our Magpie of the Month, Princess Anne. Enjoy!
When your mother is one of the most powerful women in the world, you’re going to have a few glittering events to attend. Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise, the second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, was born on this day in 1950. To celebrate the Princess Royal’s birthday, let’s have a look at some of the jewelry she’s worn to galas and banquets during her royal life so far.

June 1973: Attending a gala in Berlin

1977: Attending a film premiere in Leicester Square

May 1978: Leaving a dinner at the Dorchester Hotel 
February 1984: Floral jewels for a banquet in Gambia

July 1984: Berkeley Square Ball

December 1984: Diamonds and her copy of the Albert brooch at a banquet in Dubai

March 1987: Diamonds and rubies at a banquet for King Fahd of Saudi Arabia

April 1988: Wearing her grandmother’s meander tiara during a Norwegian state visit

January 1992: Attending a fashion show in support of the British Clothing Council

April 1995: Diamonds and tartan for the Caledonian Ball

June 1996: At an Olympic fundraising ball in London

November 1997: Attending a gala for her parents’ golden wedding anniversary

2001: Banquet hosted by the president of South Africa

June 2002: The festoon necklace for a Golden Jubilee dinner at Windsor Castle

December 2004: Saudi jewels for the Festival of Trees gala

July 2006: Diamonds for the silver wedding of Henri and Maria Teresa of Luxembourg

February 2007: Celebrating the 70th birthday of Harald V of Norway

December 2007: Aquamarines at the Natural History Museum

March 2008: The festoon tiara at Windsor Castle during a state visit from France

November 2012: Diamond, sapphire, and ruby set for the Maritime Media Awards

The Marie Feodorovna Pearl and Sapphire Choker

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Of all of Princess Anne’s jewelry, the piece with maybe the best historical provenance is today’s jewel: the diamond and pearl choker with a geometric sapphire and diamond clasp. It may be worn today by a British princess, but it has Romanov roots.

Marie Feodorovna, painted in 1874 by Makovsky (source)

The choker is one of the pieces that Queen Mary purchased from the estate of the late Empress Marie Feodorovna. Minnie was the daughter, sister, wife, and mother of monarchs; she was a Danish princess who was married to Tsar Alexander III of Russia. As you can imagine, her jewel collection was extensive, and it included a number of sapphire pieces, among them the parure depicted in the 1874 portrait above. I’ve seen speculation that the sapphire in the choker’s clasp came from this set, but I’m not sure that such a suggestion could ever really be fully explored, given the fate of the majority of the Romanov jewels.

Indeed, although Minnie made it out of Russia after the revolution, most of her jewels were left behind. She retained some pieces, and after her death, a collection of the empress’s jewels was sold at Hennels. This choker necklace is one of the pieces that was purchased at that sale by Queen Mary. On the inventory of the sale, which is reproduced on Ursula’s jewel website, the choker is number seven on the list, described as “pearl & diamond choker w/sapphire & diamond clasp.” According to the inventory, Mary bought the necklace for 6,000 pounds.

Queen Mary was photographed in the choker, which she sometimes wore with her honeysuckle tiara or with another jewel that is often attributed (though with much less certainty) to the Romanovs, the diamond and sapphire bandeau. The choker is grand enough to stand up against the piles of jewelry that Mary wore; its four rows of pearls include interspersed diamond sections, and the diamond and sapphire clasp is a substantial piece of its own. And even better, the necklace can also be taken apart and worn as a pair of bracelets, while the clasp can be worn as a separate brooch.

When Queen Mary died in 1953, her granddaughter, Elizabeth II, inherited the majority of her jewels. The Russian choker was among that cache, and in the early years of her reign, she wore the piece a few times. In recent years, however, the primary wearer of the choker has been Elizabeth’s only daughter, the Princess Royal. Anne sometimes pairs the piece with another sapphire jewel — her sapphire and diamond brooch, which Suzy Menkes argues is probably one of the brooches made for the daughters of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. The two pieces can both be seen on Anne in the photograph above.

Anne has other pearl chokers, including a larger one that she often wears at daytime events like Royal Ascot and a smaller, more delicate version. She seems to reserve the Marie Feodorovna choker mainly for significant events. (Here, you can see her wearing the choker with her paternal grandmother’s meander tiara.) More recently, she’s worn it at the gala held the night before Prince William’s wedding in 2011 (see the photo above).

It’s not known whether Anne now owns this choker, or whether it’s a long-term loan from the Queen. I tend to believe this may have been a gift. Anne wears chokers far more than her mother; she certainly gets more use out of this piece than Elizabeth ever did. And although the piece has significant history in terms of the larger world of royalty, it’s not a British heirloom piece, exactly.

If the Queen is to choose a piece from her own personal collection to give to her daughter — and therefore take a piece of jewelry out of the main line of royal inheritance — it makes sense that she’d select an item with a relatively short history in the Windsor vaults. It’s beautiful, and it has major roots, but it’s not an heirloom of the crown. I suppose only time will tell!