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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Sundays with the Queen: The King Faisal Necklace

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Time for another new feature here at The Court Jeweller! Along with occasionally bringing you Sunday news updates, we’ll be delving into the extensive jewelry vaults of Buckingham Palace to marvel at pieces owned by Queen Elizabeth II. Today, we begin with one of my favorites: the King Faisal Diamond Necklace. Enjoy!

In May 1967, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia traveled to the United Kingdom for a state visit. He brought with him a rather glittering gift for Queen Elizabeth II: a diamond necklace, made in the 1950s by Harry Winston.

Faisal had purchased the necklace from the jeweler in March. The piece is set with more than 300 diamonds, including baguettes, brilliants, and eleven pear-shaped diamonds set as pendant stones. The stones are set in platinum, and the necklace features a combined weight of more than 80 carats of diamonds.

The King Faisal Necklace became a part of Elizabeth’s rotation of jewels for events like state banquets. She has paired the necklace with more than one tiara — often either the Vladimir Tiara or the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara.

In recent years, however, the Queen has frequently selected other diamond necklaces, including the King Khalid Necklace, for gala events. (This is just my speculation, but I wonder if the fact that the Faisal Necklace sits close to the throat makes it less than comfortable.) Instead, she has loaned the piece out to her daughters-in-law. Above, the Princess of Wales wears the Faisal Necklace in Australia in 1983.

Much more recently, the Countess of Wessex wore the Faisal Necklace at the dinner held the night before the wedding of the Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg in 2012.

Queen Margherita’s Musy Tiara

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Even though the House of Savoy’s tenure as Italian monarchs was a relatively short-lived one — they ruled over the unified country for less than a century — the family still managed to amass quite the jewel collection. And while many pieces have been lost or sold since the family went into exile, today’s tiara, the impressive Musy tiara that belonged to Queen Margherita, has managed to stay in the Savoy collection.

The tiara dates to 1904, when Queen Margherita, who was by then the nation’s dowager queen, ordered it from Musy. Some of Margherita’s own pieces were broken up to create this new tiara, which is one of the most versatile diadems in any royal family’s arsenal. Different sections of the tiara can be removed or swapped out to create new looks. The piece, which incorporates scroll and shell motifs and floral elements with large central pearls, is somehow large and airy at the same time. (It’s an impressive design, but I have to admit that it’s my second favorite thing associated with Margherita. A girl’s got to have her priorities!)

Margherita wore the new tiara for the first time at the christening of her grandson, the future King Umberto II, so it’s appropriate that when she shuffled off this mortal coil in 1926, she bequeathed the piece to him. In turn, Umberto gave the tiara to his bride, Princess Marie José of Belgium, as a wedding gift. She wore it on their wedding day in 1930, and it became one of the pieces she was most associated with. Above, she wears the tiara in 1960 during the wedding festivities of King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium.

After the Italian people voted to end their monarchy in 1946, Marie José took the tiara with her into exile. Eventually she passed the tiara on to the woman who would be queen today had the monarchy not been abolished: Marina, the wife of Umberto and Marie José’s son, Vittorio Emanuele. Although she has few occasions to wear such a major piece, Marina did sport the complete tiara — and a pair of dark lenses — at the wedding of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark in 2004.