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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Festival of Remembrance Jewels

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On Saturday night in London, the Windsors gathered for the annual Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall. The festival, which is presented by the Royal British Legion, is held every year on the Saturday before Remembrance Sunday. Musical performances, military displays, and prayers are included in the festival program, which is designed to honor those who lost their lives in British military conflicts; the festival culminates with a shower of poppy petals falling from the ceiling.

The royal family traditionally attends the evening performance of the festival, and this year, they were out in force. The princes and dukes wore their military badges pinned to their suit jackets, and the royal women wore brooches with gatherings of poppies. Here’s a look at the jewels they wore, including several pieces with direct ties to the armed forces and to the Royal British Legion’s poppy appeal.

The Queen often uses one of her many bow brooches to gather the stems of her poppies, but for the festival, she wore her poppies alongside Queen Mary’s Richmond Brooch. The large diamond brooch, which has a round pearl set in its center and a pear-shaped pearl drop, was a wedding gift to Mary in 1893 from the town of Richmond, where the Teck family lived at White Lodge. The brooch is a large, grand piece, often chosen for foreign visits and major occasions. It makes sense to me that she chose a piece of jewelry for this year’s festival that belonged to her grandmother — after all, this is the year of centenary commemorations of World War I, and Mary was the nation’s queen consort during the war.

With the Richmond brooch, the Queen wore pearl earrings and one of her two-stranded pearl necklaces. The Queen has lots of sets of pearls, and it can be almost impossible to tell them apart. But based on the drape of this set, I think it might be the Queen Anne and Queen Caroline pearl necklaces worn together. The necklaces are serious antiques, and they’re named after the two queens who supposedly first owned them — the Queen Anne necklace (which belonged to Queen Anne, the last monarch from the House of Stuart) is the smaller one, and the Queen Caroline necklace (which belonged to Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II) is slightly larger. Victoria designated these as heirlooms of the crown, and the Queen received them from her parents as a wedding gift in 1947 and wore them on her wedding day.

HM is also wearing pearl and diamond cluster earrings — possibly the earrings from Queen Alexandra’s wedding parure? The size looks to match the Garrard-made earrings from that set, which was given to Alexandra by her husband, the future Edward VII, in 1862.

Newly returned from their tour of Colombia and Mexico, the Duchess of Cornwall repeated one of the pieces of jewelry that she wore on that trip: her diamond serpent necklace, which has been in her collection since before her wedding to Prince Charles in 2005. Many think that the necklace was probably a gift from her husband. She’s also wearing pearl earrings, likely the same diamond and pearl pair that she also wore during the tour, and a diamond bracelet.

The Countess of Wessex neatly solved the brooch-or-poppies dilemma by wearing a crystal poppy brooch made by Buckley London. Proceeds from the sale of the poppy brooch support to the Royal British Legion. Sophie is also wearing the cap badge of Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps; she is the colonel-in-chief of the corps. Her earrings are the Lemon Topaz Gemstone Cluster Earrings from Heavenly Necklaces.

The Duchess of Gloucester wore a strand of lovely gray pearls. The clip-like elements on her collar aren’t part of the necklace, but I’ve not been able to discern whether they’re separate pieces of jewelry or a part of the garment. Birgitte secured her poppies with a cap badge — I believe it’s the badge of the Royal Army Dental Corps. Birgitte is their colonel-in-chief.

One of my favorite British royals, Princess Alexandra,was elegant as usual, wearing a pearl choker with a geometric pearl and diamond clasp, one of her signature pieces. She’s also wearing diamond and pearl cluster earrings, her diamond floral brooch, and two cap badges that I’ve not been able to identify from these photographs.

The Festival is a precursor to tomorrow’s somber Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Cenotaph. We’ll be back here tomorrow afternoon with a look at the jewels chosen on Sunday to honor the memories of British servicemen and women.

This Week in Royal Jewels: October 31-November 6

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October 31-November 6, 2014
Galas, tiaras, and awards ceremonies galore this week! Enjoy!

10. On Thursday, Queen Elizabeth II joined King Philippe of the Belgians at the opening of the new Flanders Field Memorial in London. She wore her diamond and gold sunflower brooch, made in the 1970s by Garrard.

9. On Saturday, Charlotte Casiraghi attended a gala in Los Angeles, where she wore bracelets with her striking gown. Here’s a better look:

And — intriguingly — doesn’t that look like a wedding ring on Charlotte’s left hand???

8. Queen Letizia of Spain continued her love affair with petite pendant earrings at the Francisco Cerecedo Journalism Awards on Wednesday. Anyone else think this pair looks a bit like the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding earrings? (Sans acorns, of course!)

7. Last Wednesday, Queen Silvia of Sweden wore pearls and a silver cuff bracelet to give an award to Malala Yousafzai, one of the winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize (and someone that I admire greatly!).

6. Back in the Netherlands after trips to Japan and South Korea, Queen Maxima wore hoops to visit a children’s music organization on Thursday.

5. In Campeche on Wednesday, the Duchess of Cornwall wore pearls and a pair of bracelets — plus, of course, her poppy — during an engagement with the first lady of the state of Monterrey.

4. On Thursday evening, Queen Elizabeth II attended the Recovery Pathway reception at Buckingham Palace with her grandsons, William and Harry; she wore her Cartier diamond and aquamarine clips paired together as a single brooch. Update: Yep, although this one resembles the Cartier clips, it’s actually a diamond and aquamarine brooch/set of clips that belonged to the Queen Mother, worn by HM recently at Ascot.

3. During her recent trip to South Africa, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark wore a stunning pair of gold earrings, made by Jewlscph. They’re made of gold-plated sterling silver, and they retail for 520 euros.

2. From South Africa, Mary traveled to Geneva for an event at the United Nations on Thursday. She wore a large blue leaf-shaped brooch as she spoke during a meeting on the status of women.

1. As per usual, tiaras win the week for me! Hop over to Luxarazzi to see Grand Duchess Maria Teresa in the family’s citrine/topaz parure, and Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie wearing one of the family’s amethyst sets, including the tiara worn above in the 1970s by Princess Marie-Astrid. Love the purple jewels on Stephanie with that gown!

Jewel History: Extravagant Splendors of the Modern Woman (1904)

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Constance Cornwallis-West, ca. 1907 (source)
 “Extravagant Splendors of the Modern Woman”
(originally published in the Washington Post, 6 Nov 1904)

From the London Mail — The desire for jewels and the extravagantly splendid displays now made by women who delight in such manifestations of wealth are two of the main characteristics of the power dress exercises over women in this luxurious age.

A million sovereigns sounds an incredibly huge sum of money to sink in precious stones, but the gem-caskets of some of our great ladies represent that value very closely, and it is actually touched in a few notable instances.

Lady Curzon, Vicereine of India, ca. 1903 (source)

Quite moderately wealthy young married women do not consider their catalogue of jewels complete with two or three tiaras, a string of pearls capable of being measured by the yard, a stomacher brilliantly ablaze with gems, a dog-collar, and numerous necklets, rings of various colors to match various gems, to say nothing of aigrettes of diamonds, bracelets, brooches, and little ornaments by the hundred.


One single necklet of pearls — only a string that closely clasps the
throat — has been known to cost £90,000; a tiara swallows up any sum
up to £25,000, and even more when it contains practically priceless
stones; one brooch may easily represent £500, while a stomacher can
scarcely cost less. Hence, to be bedizended in gems that represent
£100,000 is not a difficult task for the woman who likes a barbaric
display and can afford to indulge her whim.

Queen Ena of Spain, ca. 1906 (source)

The extravagance this craving for gems leads to is excused by some people on the score that precious stones are a good and sound investment, while the dealers in imitation gems truthfully aver that it fosters their trade.

A very quaint fashion from old times is the agrafe of brilliants, an ornament resembling a bow and bands of diamond duplicated so many times as to trim a dress from the decolletage to the hem of the skirt.

The ornaments graduate in size so that at the foot of the dress they are much larger than they are at the waist, thereby producing a very elegant effect. These necessarily are rarely to be seen in real stones, but sets of them are being sought in old French paste, which produces as brilliant an effect as real diamonds, and can scarcely be detected from them by the eyes even of experts.

Ornaments of this caliber are found upon quaint Old World dresses made with the corsage a point, and the full, simple skirt of bygone times. One ordered the other day for a woman whose vogue is the picturesque was made of cloud-gray satin, and was quite untrimmed save for the agrafes and a berthe and elbow-flounces of rich old lace.

Juliet nets of diamonds and pearls are so much more beautiful than those of colored stones that they are likely to last longer than the rest of their kind in the favor of the wealthy woman. A new set is made of gold lattice work, fastened where the lattice crosses with rosettes of diamonds, and all round the edges festooned with a glittering fringe of the same precious stones.

Very lovely aigrettes, composed of a pair of diamond leaves, the edges of which meet in the center, are being made purposely to be worn with the Marie Stuart coiffure, which dips in the center of the brow and causes a semi-conventional ornament of this kind to look unusually charming. The jewelers have been very busy lately inventing new ornaments or fresh ways of wearing old ones. How to make use of very long ropes of pearls, since it became less fashionable than it was a few years ago to wind them round the throat, has been a problem to the wealthy possessors of such baubles which has at last been answered.

Sophie of Prussia, ca. 1903 (source)

A string of pearls twisted twice round the throat and then looped in front on the low corsage with fastenings here and there composed of jeweled brooches is, comparatively speaking, an old tale. The latest adaptation of this idea is to festoon the jewels at the back of the corsage as well as in the front, and if the strings are very long indeed, the effect produced is of the utmost magnificence. In some cases a complete berthe of splendid gems is provided by means of one long necklace of gems, or two or three worn at the same time.