united kingdom – Page 793

The Order of the British Empire

04.17.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Star of the Order of the British Empire [1]

Yesterday at Windsor Castle, ~~intrepid detective Jessica Fletcher~~ actress Angela Lansbury was invested by the Queen as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Every year, various Brits are made members of the order, entitling them to append initials like MBE, OBE, or KBE to their names. But what exactly is this order of chivalry, and who is entitled to receive it?

The order — the full name of which is The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire [2] — was founded by King George V in 1917 as a way to honor British citizens who had made important contributions during the First World War. Notably, it was the first order of British chivalry to include female members. The motto of the order is “For God and the Empire.”

Today, there are separate civil and military divisions of the order, but the qualifications for belonging to either remain the same: members of the order must have made a significant contribution to the nation at the local, regional, or national level. The five ranks of the order — Knight/Dame Grand Cross (GBE), Knight/Dame Commander (KBE/DBE), Commander (CBE), Officer (OBE), and Member (MBE) — are generally awarded based on the scope of the member’s contribution. For example, local achievements are often honored with MBEs, while a national contribution will be honored with a CBE or even a knighthood [3].

The Order of the British Empire is the most junior of the orders of British chivalry, following just after the Royal Victorian Order in precedence. Any Briton, man or woman, who has made significant contributions to the nation can be nominated to receive it. (Some citizens of Commonwealth realms are also entitled to become members of the order.) Occasionally, it’s also awarded to foreign nationals to honor their contributions to Britain; this is usually done on an honorary basis, as members of the order are required to swear allegiance to the Queen. For example, Bill Gates is an honorary knight commander of the order, but because he’s American, he’s not called “Sir Bill” — though he can use the initials KBE after his name if he wants.

Knights and Dames Grand Cross of the order are entitled to wear the order’s mantle, collar, and star. (The star can also be worn by Knights and Dames Commander; you can see Dame Angela’s star behind her badge above.) The mantle, pictured above on Queen Elizabeth II (the sovereign of the order), is made of red silk (Debrett’s calls the specific color “rose pink” [4]) with a gray lining. It features an embroidered version of the order’s eight-pointed star, which features portraits of King George V and Queen Mary [5] encircled by the order’s motto. (Interestingly, this is one of the orders of chivalry that does not include sashes as a part of the insignia.)

The collar is made of gold and features the royal arms interspersed with the cypher of George V. On the order’s “collar days,” the badge is worn suspended from the collar by Knights and Dames Grand Cross. Most of the collar days are religious festivals, but collars are also worn on the Queen’s accession day (February 6), Prince Philip’s birthday (June 10), Restoration Day (May 29), and Coronation Day (June 2). The best chance to see Knights and Dames Grand Cross in all their finery (like the Queen, pictured above in 2012) is at the prayer service for the order, held every four years at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, where there is a chapel for the order in the cathedral crypt [6]. The next service will be held in 2016.

On regular days, the badge of the order is worn suspended from a rose-pink ribbon. You can tell a civil member of the order from a military member by looking at the ribbon: military members have a gray stripe running down the center of the ribbon. The badge is a cross patonce that features the images of George and Mary in the center on one side, with George V’s cypher on the other. The higher your rank, the bigger your badge; the colors also differ according to rank, with MBEs having silver crosses, OBEs gold crosses (seen above on David Beckham at the royal wedding in April 2011), and CBEs/KBEs/DBEs/GBEs blue and crimson enameled crosses. As of December 2006, all members of the order are also eligible to wear a lapel pin that features an image of the order’s badge.

As so many are eligible to become members of the order — if you fit the main national criteria, you can be nominated, and various government officials do the appointing rather than the Queen — there are tens of thousands of living people who belong to its various ranks. Intriguingly, two of the members of the lowest rank are also members of the royal family: Mike Tindall and Zara Phillips (granddaughter of the Queen, pictured above after receiving her MBE in 2007), who were both recognized for their sporting contributions. And there have been lots of others who were offered membership at different levels but turned it down or renounced it later for various reasons, including C.S. Lewis, T.E. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, John Lennon, and Roald Dahl.

(And, if you take nothing else away from this post, you now know the answer to the question “what do Angela Lansbury, David Beckham, and Zara Phillips have in common?”)

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Image available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
2. The name of the order has remained the same even after the British empire transitioned into the Commonwealth of Nations. Some have boycotted the order because they feel the name is too linked to an imperial past.
3. See the official government page on the various levels of membership here.
4. More on the order at the Debrett’s website here.
5. Insignia made before 1937 feature an image of Britannia rather than of the king and queen.
6. More from the official website of the British monarchy here.

Jewel History: Brilliant Gems to Be Sold (1907)

04.15.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Mrs. Lewis-Hill, ca. 1890 [1]

“Brilliant Gems to Be Sold”

(originally appeared in the Washington Post, 14 Apr 1907)

There were placed on view yesterday at Christie’s the dazzling jewels which were the personal ornaments of the late Mrs. Lewis-Hill, better known by her first married name, Mrs. Sam Lewis [2]. Such a display of precious stones has not often been seen in a London auction room nor anywhere else. Experts say the sale of these rare gems, which will take place on Monday, will rank with the Dudley Gordon Lennox [3] and Anglesey [4] dispersals.

Viewed as a collection, as they appear in the show cases, brilliantly lighted by electric lamps, it seems almost impossible that they should have been the property of one woman, and that woman not of very high rank in life. Great bunches of pearls, wonderful aggregations of diamonds, superb examples of rubies, emeralds, and sapphires greet the eye, and constitute a picture of extreme loveliness. The three most important items of the collection are a pearl and brilliant necklace, a brilliant tiara, and a great rope of pearls.

The necklace is composed of fifteen huge drops, each comprising a bouton pearl, a large brilliant, and a very large and wonderful pear-shaped pearl. The fifteen drops depend from a band of lovely diamonds.

The tiara is a great work of art. Sprays of diamond foliage bank the sides. Twenty-six collet brilliants fill up the center, surmounted by a great pear-shaped diamond of dazzling luster.

The rope of pearls is made up of 229 gems, every one a thing of beauty, all artistically graduated on a single rope.

The collection, by the way, runs largely to pearls, which are seen in rings, pins, brooches, and almost every other form of jewelry. Every woman who saw the display yesterday yearned to possess the whole of it [5].

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Henry Jones Thaddeus’s Portrait of Ada Lewis (1890); source here.
2. Ada Hannah Davis (1844-1906) was the wife of London financier Samuel “Sam” Lewis (1837-1901), who died and left her a fortune. She used some of the inheritance to establish scholarships in her name at the Royal Academy of Music. (She also gifted them a Stradivarius violin.) Ada was a musician in her own right, but the better-known musical talent in her family was her sister, the composer Hope Temple (who was herself married to the French composer and conductor André Messager). In 1904, Ada remarried; her second husband was William James Montague Hill. She died in London in October 1906.
3. I believe the sale referenced here is that of the jewels of the late Lady Henry Gordon-Lennox (née Amelia Brooman) at Christie’s in 1903; more information available here.
4. In 1904, the jewelry collection of the flamboyant 5th Marquess of Anglesey was auctioned to pay off his extensive debts. Read more here at the Guardian.
5. The estate, including the jewelry, ended up bringing a total of more than £130,000 at auction; see here.

The Cullinan Diamond

04.14.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

April may be the cruellest month, but it’s also the month in which we celebrate the queen of the world of gems: the diamond. April babies wear it as their birthstone, which is handy, because this is the month where the sun finally starts to peek out and allow diamonds to sparkle. Reviewing the diamonds in royal collections would be totally impossible, so instead, I’ve decided to focus on the various stones cut from one of the grandest diamonds of them all: The Cullinan Diamond.

The uncut Cullinan [3]

The diamond was discovered in the Premier diamond mine in Pretoria, South Africa. In 1905, the superintendent of the mine spotted the enormous stone by chance while on his rounds. Caroline de Guitaut, who wrote the book accompanying the 2012 diamond exhibition at Buckingham Palace, told the BBC, “So incredible was its discovery that the moment it was found at the Premier Mine it was thrown out of the window of the mine manager’s office because it was thought to be a worthless crystal” [2]. The uncut Cullinan diamond (named after the man who owned the mine) weighed more than a pound and measured at more than 3000 carats, far surpassing the size of any other diamond that had ever been found.

South Africa was still a part of the British empire when the diamond was discovered, and the colonial government purchased it. They wanted to bestow the enormous stone on the reigning king, Edward VII. At first, he didn’t want to accept — there had also been some disagreement about whether to offer it to him in the first place — but after a bit of convincing (by a young Winston Churchill, of all people), he finally agreed to take it. It seems sort of ridiculous to imagine that you’d have to twist anyone’s arm to get them to accept such an amazing gemstone, but the elaborate gems that we love to look at are also major responsibilities — and sometimes potential political liabilities, too.

It took a bit of wrangling to get the Cullinan from Africa to London, but once it made it to British shores, it was given to Bertie on his birthday in November 1907. (Also present to see the uncut Cullinan at Sandringham for the first time? Queen Maud of Norway and Queen Ena of Spain. Lucky them!) Lord Elgin accepted it on the king’s behalf, essentially as an heirloom of the crown (for his “heirs and successors”). And then the drama really started. The cutting of the diamond was entrusted to the Asschers, who had to come up with new tools to be able to handle such an enormous stone. On the first try, the knife broke. On the second try, the stone was successfully cut — but one story says that the super-stressed jeweler, Joseph Asscher, passed out immediately afterward. The entire process of cutting and polishing the diamond took eight months, and resulted in the loss of about 2000 carats worth of weight total [5].

Glass models of the nine major Cullinan stones [6]

The Asschers produced nine major diamonds from the original stone, plus 96 small brilliants. The British royals kept only the two largest, the 530-carat Cullinan I (called the “Great Star of Africa”) and the 317-carat Cullinan II (called the “Second Star of Africa”), which were set into the Sovereign’s Sceptre and the Imperial State Crown, respectively [7]. The stones also had fittings so that they could be worn together as a gigantic brooch. As payment for their work, the Asschers kept the rest (except for Cullinan VI, bought separately by Bertie for Alexandra [8]), which they sold to the South African government, who gave them to Queen Mary in 1910.

Today, all of the Cullinan stones belong to the British crown and/or the British royal family. The largest two remain in the regalia, while the seven remaining major stones are owned by and worn in various configurations by the Queen. Cullinan III, a pear-shaped diamond, weighs 94 carats. Both it and the 63-carat square-cut Cullinan IV were worn by Queen Mary in her crown at the coronation in 1911. (She wore all four of the biggest Cullinan stones at her first State Opening of Parliament as queen, because she was Queen Mary, for heaven’s sake.) The Delhi Durbar Tiara was also originally made to accomodate III and IV. Today, III and IV are generally worn together as a brooch [10], cheekily called “Granny’s Chips” by the present queen. Significantly, she chose this brooch for the service celebrating her Diamond Jubilee (see the photograph above) in 2012.

The fifth Cullinan stone is a heart-shaped diamond that weighs almost 19 carats. It’s also set in a brooch, pictured above during the 2012 Buckingham Palace exhibition. When Queen Mary was having the additional Cullinan stones set and designed, she intended for this one to be multi-purpose: part of this brooch, but also able to be used in the Delhi Durbar parure’s stomacher, combined with other Cullinan stones in a different brooch, and in the honeysuckle tiara worn today by the Duchess of Gloucester. Queen Mary also wore it in her coronet at the 1937 coronation.

Generally, the sixth and eighth Cullinan stones are worn together. Cullinan VI is a marquise-cut diamond, weighing around 11 carats. It’s often worn as a pendant on a brooch set with Cullinan VIII, an almost 7 carat emerald-cut stone, as a brooch. (It’s also able to be added to the Delhi Durbar stomacher.) The mount that surrounds VIII in the VI and VIII brooch [12] is almost identical to that of the Cullinan V brooch, confusingly. Queen Mary didn’t end up with the marquise-shaped VI until after Queen Alexandra’s death in 1925; remember that Edward VII gave that one directly to his wife.

The seventh Cullinan diamond, another marquise stone that weighs almost nine carats, is generally worn as one of the two pendants suspended from the Delhi Durbar necklace. Like almost all of the other Cullinan stones, Cullinan VII can be removed from the necklace and worn in various other ways, though in practice, today it stays with the necklace.

And then, finally, there’s number 9: the pear-shaped Cullinan IX, which weighs a puny 4.4 carats, is set in a ring. Along with stones III-VIII, the ring was inherited by Elizabeth II in 1953 from her grandmother, Queen Mary. Unlike the first and second stones, which are part of the crown jewels, these stones are personal property. But because of their historical importance, I think we can assume that they’ll be a permanent part of the British royal collection, passed from monarch to monarch for the foreseeable future.

(Here’s a helpful table I compiled while doing my own research on the Cullinan stones, compiled using data from the Royal Collection website and Hugh Roberts’s book. Feel free to consult it, like I have, to help you keep shapes/carats/mountings straight!)

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Photograph of the Cullinan III and IV Brooch by Samir Hussein for WireImage/Getty Images; photograph taken during the preparations for the “Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration” exhibit at Buckingham Palace in 2012.
2. See the BBC report on the Cullinan diamond, written during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
3. Photograph of the uncut Cullinan diamond available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
4. Portrait of King Edward VII from the Hulton Archive at Getty Images; it was published in a special issue of Lady’s Pictoral after the king’s death in 1910.
5. See the Royal Collection website.
6. Photograph of glass models from a German museum available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
7. Unless the pieces are in use, you can see the Cullinan diamonds in the crown and sceptre on display with the rest of the crown jewels at the Tower of London.
8. See Hugh Roberts’s discussion of the Cullinans in The Queen’s Diamonds, pp. 158-77.
9. Photograph of Queen Elizabeth II at the Diamond Jubilee service by Max Mumby for Indigo/Getty Images.
10. Here’s the Royal Collection page on the Cullinan III and IV Brooch.
11. Photograph of the Cullinan V Brooch by Bethany Clarke for Getty Images.
12. Here’s the Royal Collection page for the VI and VIII Brooch.
13. Photograph of the Delhi Durbar Necklace (and the III and IV Brooch) by Peter Macdiarmid for Getty Images.