Don’t Miss a Single Sparkling Moment! Sign up for The Court Jeweller Newsletter

The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Queen Sonja’s Pearl Drop Brooch

by // Leave a Comment

Queen Sonja of Norway’s jewel box is full of suites and parures of coordinating jewels, but our Magpie of the Month also has some stunning individual pieces. One of these is today’s piece of jewelry: Sonja’s diamond and pearl drop brooch.

Queen Alexandra (source)

The original owner of the brooch was Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, who is the ancestor of Norway’s present-day royals through her daughter, Queen Maud. In the portrait above, Alexandra wears the circular diamond brooch, with its pearl pendant, pinned to the left shoulder of her gown.

The circular diamond brooch features three circular “rows” of diamonds, from which is suspended a single pearl drop. The brooch can also be worn without the pendant pearl, and it has been used as a pendant itself, attached to a diamond necklace.

Although Queen Maud must have either been gifted the brooch by her mother or inherited it following Alexandra’s death, I have not been able to find any photographs of Maud wearing the piece. Her daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Märtha, was apparently also not photographed in the brooch (though because Maud’s jewelry was in England when she died, Märtha did not wear many of Maud’s jewels). However, in more recent years, Queen Alexandra’s diamond and pearl brooch has found a home in Sonja’s jewelry box. Above, Crown Princess Sonja wears the brooch with the pearl pendant at the christening of her daughter, Princess Märtha Louise, in 1971.

She sometimes selects this glittering brooch for important royal events taking place during the day, like the 1999 royal wedding of Princess Alexia of Greece and Denmark.

However, she also sports the brooch for evening gala events. Above, she wears it during the celebrations for King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden’s 50th birthday in 1996.

And, of course, the brooch has made several state visit appearances, including this trip to the Vatican in October 2001…

…and this state banquet in Switzerland in April 2006. The piece is especially versatile because it combines diamonds and pearls, which means Sonja can pair it with the likes Queen Maud’s pearl tiara or Queen Josefina’s diamond tiara. She also sometimes uses the diamond portion to supplement the diamond suite, suspending it from a collet necklace. I love to see modern queens recycling pieces with serious history, and I’d really love to see this one out and about more often!

This Week in Royal Jewels: July 11-17

by // Leave a Comment

July 11-17, 2014
Time for another week’s worth of royal glitter! This week, we feature a first meeting between two royal spouses, plus a first official engagement for a princess-to-be. Enjoy!



10. Crown Princess Victoria celebrated her birthday on Monday at the Swedish family’s summer residence in Oland. For the family’s traditional morning appearance outside their Solliden home, Victoria wore pearl earrings. She also donned necklaces given to her by local children as she greeted Swedes in the gathered crowd.

9. Victoria wasn’t the only member of the family who picked up some jewelry on Monday morning. Could her daughter, Princess Estelle, be any cuter in her bracelets?

8. The Swedish royal matriarch, Queen Silvia, went for more traditional elegance with her jewelry on Monday, wearing a pearl necklace and earrings. But even she added a whimsical touch with her hair ornament. Anyone else suspect that Estelle may have had a role in the placement of that little bauble?

7. Another member of the Swedish royal family, Sofia Hellqvist, attended her first official event at Monday evening’s concert. Rain caused the royal ladies to seek the safety of ponchos for much of the event, but she still managed to keep her bracelet visible. Sofia often wears a bracelet in support of her charity, Project Playground, but this looks to be a different piece.

6. King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain embarked on another of their introductory visits this week, this time to Morocco. Letizia kept her jewelry minimal while visiting a cancer research center on Tuesday, but Lalla Salma, the wife of the Moroccan king, wore an eye-catching brooch.

5. Lalla Salma also stole the show at a dinner held for the Spanish royals, wearing a gorgeous set of emeralds. But Letizia didn’t wholly forego the bling, wearing her wedding earrings and her Cartier diamond bracelet on her left wrist.

4. One of the unsung workers of the Windsor clan, Princess Alexandra, opened a hospice center in Lichfield on Friday. She wore a pair of stunning sapphire earrings, plus a golden tortoise brooch. It makes sense that Alexandra knows her bling; after all, she’s descended from the Romanovs and the Greek royal family as well as the Brits!

3. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall have been busy in Devon and Cornwall this week. In Axminster on Tuesday, Camilla donned a delicate floral brooch with some serious history: it’s a Faberge piece that was given to the Queen Mum by Nikita Khrushchev.

2. The dress code was rather relaxed for the christening of Princess Amalia of Nassau on Saturday, but the baby’s grandmother, Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg, still managed to add a bit of sparkle with earrings and a pendant necklace.

1. Does it get much better than this? Queen Elizabeth II held a reception at Buckingham Palace on Monday for the winners of the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise, and she wore one of her rarely-seen treasures: the brooch made of the Cullinan VI and Cullinan VIII stones. (Need a refresher on the Cullinan? Here you go!)

Redesign It: Queen Elizabeth II’s Belgian Sapphire Tiara

by // Leave a Comment

Time for another chance for you to play court jeweller, magpies! Today, our jewel in question is the sapphire tiara that Queen Elizabeth II acquired in the 1960s to coordinate with a demi-parure of Victorian sapphire jewels given to her by her father, King George VI. The tiara is a converted necklace; the piece once belonged to Princess Louise of Belgium, who married a Saxe-Coburg and Gotha prince.
If you had a chance to make changes to this tiara, what would you do?