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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Princess Anne’s Diamond Festoon Necklace

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Get excited, everyone — we have a new Magpie of the Month! The Princess Royal gets a lot of flack for keeping the same hairstyle since the ’70s and wearing decades-old clothes, but her jewelry collection often doesn’t get enough attention at all. The daughter of a reigning queen, Anne has inherited jewels from the British royal family as well as from her father’s Greek and German royal relatives. Today’s piece is a gift from her parents: her diamond festoon necklace.

According to Leslie Field, this necklace was an eighteenth birthday present to Anne from her parents, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. Field describes the necklace as “an antique diamond festoon necklace with ribbons and bows, and pendant drops.” Some have suggested in the past that the necklace was remade from one that belonged to Queen Alexandra; however, most sources state that Elizabeth and Philip purchased the necklace themselves.

Along with the necklace, Field states that Anne received a coordinating pair of diamond pendant earrings from her parents.

Anne often pairs the necklace and earrings with the diamond festoon tiara that she received as a gift from the World Wide Shipping Group. (We talked more about that tiara here!) Along with wearing the tiara, necklace, and earrings together for various state events, Anne wore them in her engagement portraits. She also wore the necklace and earrings with a diamond floral brooch in her 60th birthday portraits (see here and here.)

And the earrings have also had one more very significant outing: Anne’s daughter, Zara, wore them on her wedding day in 2011 (along with a tiara that had belonged to Prince Philip’s mother, Alice of Battenberg).

Saturday Sparkler: The Maltese Cross Tiara

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We’ve been talking quite a lot recently about the Norwegian royal jewels with British connections. Today, we’ve got yet another example: the Maltese Cross Tiara. It belonged to Queen Alexandra, whose daughter, Princess Maud, became queen of Norway in 1905. Trond Norén Isaksen notes that Alexandra had the diamond circlet made as a lighter alternative to the George IV State Diadem, which is still worn today by Queen Elizabeth II.

(source)

Here’s Alexandra in the simpler diamond circlet (with Queen Victoria’s small diamond crown placed inside). The tiara takes its name from the Maltese crosses that are placed atop its bandeau base. As you can see in the photo of Alexandra, the circlet originally also had four fleur-de-lys elements situated between the Maltese crosses. It also was originally able to take the Cullinan VI stone, though that diamond was never permanently incorporated into the piece.


According to Hugh Roberts, Queen Maud inherited the Maltese circlet when Alexandra died in 1925. Isaksen says that Maud is the one who removed the fleur-de-lys elements, as she did not want the tiara to look too much like the original British version. She wore the piece frequently, and brought it back to Britain with her for the 1937 coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Maud also had the tiara with her when she returned to the UK in the following autumn. We’ve been over this story before — she brought her jewels to Britain with her so that they could be cleaned, but she died unexpectedly, and then the jewels didn’t make it back to Norway until 1953. Because of this, Maud’s daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Märtha, never wore the circlet.

Instead, it was Maud’s granddaughter-in-law, Sonja, who would wear the tiara next. The current queen has altered the piece, reducing its circumference, and she most frequently wears it just as a bandeau, without any of the crosses.

Occasionally, however, she wears the piece with three of the four crosses placed at the very front of the circlet, in an attempt (I think) to make the piece look a bit more like a traditional tiara. Today, Queen Sonja is the only member of the family who wears the circlet, though there were two occasions in the early 1990s when she has loaned the bandeau, sans crosses, to her daughter, Princess Märtha Louise.

This Week in Royal Jewels: July 25-31

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July 25-31, 2014
As we begin the month of August, the royals have slowed down and started their summer holidays. This month, we’ll be looking at the top five jewel stories of the week — but we’ve still got some sparkle close at hand!


5. With most of the Windsors gathered in Glasgow, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall have been heading out to other parts of the UK. On Wednesday, they visited the Sandringham Flower Show, and Camilla added a bit of glitter to her outfit courtesy her sparkling butterfly brooch. She’s been wearing the brooch since at least 2006; it appears to be made of diamonds and sapphires.

4. The butterfly wasn’t Camilla’s only brooch outing of the week; she wore a stylized floral brooch to have a pint in Rutland. (This picture was maybe my favorite of the entire week. FYI: Camilla is on my list of “top five royals to have a pint with.” Who are yours?)

3. In Scotland, the Countess of Strathearn kept her jewelry simple while watching the athletics competition at the Commonwealth Games: citrine earrings by Kiki McDonough, a necklace with a set of Asprey pendant charms, her famous engagement ring, plus her wedding ring and her diamond eternity band, and what looks to be yet another of the rainbow bracelets that children often give to royals during walkabouts these days.

2. Princess Charlene of Monaco added a new foreign order to her small (but growing) collection this week, when she was officially made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Italy.

1. She may not be the reigning queen consort any longer, but Queen Sofia of Spain is still very much the matriarch of the family. In Palma de Mallorca this week, she wore delicate jewelry while taking her grandchildren to sailing school.