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 Mary’s Love Trophy Collar

by // Leave a Comment

May (when Princess of Wales), ca. 1905, wearing the Love Trophy Collar [1]
In our inaugural month of May here at the Court Jeweller, was there any other possible choice for Magpie of the Month than “May” herself, Queen Mary? Born in May, Victoria Mary of Teck was the queen consort of King George V of the United Kingdom, and she was one of the most innovative jewelry collectors and wearers of her era.
The daughter of a German duke and a British princess, the wife of a king, and the mother of two more kings, Queen Mary is also the grandmother of Britain’s reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. May’s jewel collection is legendary, and this month I’m going to be spotlighting some of the rarer pieces from her jewel box. First up: one of her most elaborate choker necklaces, the Love Trophy Collar.
The necklace was made by Garrard in 1901 using diamonds taken from pieces of jewelry owned by May’s grandmother (Princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel, later the Duchess of Cambridge) and her aunt (Princess Augusta of Cambridge, later the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz). Those gemstones were set in gold in a necklace that Hugh Roberts describes as a “delicately constructed collar, in the Louis XVI style.” In the photograph above, the collar is the top necklace of the two she wears. (She’s also apparently wearing the dress she wore for the coronation of her parents-in-law in 1902; however, this photograph was taken in 1905. She wore different jewels for that coronation, including the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara and a different choker necklace.)

Queen Mary wearing the necklace [2]
This particular choker is made up of a series of rectangular panels linked together by vertical rows of diamonds. Each “panel” of the Love Trophy necklace features a specific set of symbolic design elements; you can see one panel head-on in the detail of the photograph above. The center of the panels features an “amatory trophy” (hence the name of the piece): a burning torch and a quiver of arrows crossed with an archer’s bow, with clear references to Cupid, the god of love. This “love trophy” is surrounded by a wreath of laurel and suspended from a diamond ribbon tied in a bow.
Roberts notes that necklaces like this choker fell out of fashion rather quickly after May had it made. She passed the necklace along to her daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), while Elizabeth was still the Duchess of York. Even so, Elizabeth never wore the piece much, and I’ve never seen a photograph of her wearing it in public at all. In 2002, the necklace was inherited by the current Queen, but she hasn’t worn it in public yet either. (And, given her taste in jewelry, I’d be surprised if she ever does.)
It’s sort of a cliche these days to imagine how heirloom royal jewelry would look on the most popular young royal lady out there, the current Duchess of Cambridge, but I really think she might be the one most likely to pull this piece off. She’s tall, she has a long neck, and she favors unfussy fashions that would not compete for the spotlight with an elaborate necklace like this. The Queen has shown that she’s willing to let her granddaughter-in-law wear important pieces of royal jewelry out and about (think of her appearances in the Papyrus Tiara and the Nizam of Hyderabad Necklace). Perhaps the Love Trophy Collar might reappear someday soon on her, too?
NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Photograph in the public domain due to age; source here. The web source dates the image to 1902; however, Hugh Roberts dates a photograph from the same sitting to 1905 in The Queen’s Diamonds.
2. Cropped version of a photograph in the public domain due to age; source here.

Jewel History: Gem of Queen Olga’s Held Here for Duty (1921)

by // Leave a Comment

Queen Olga of Greece, ca. 1880 [1]
“Gem of Queen Olga’s Held Here for Duty”
(originally appeared in the New York Times on 6 May 1921)



Queen Olga [2], mother of King Constantine of Greece [3], is in such circumstances that she is reported to have offered some of her jewels for sale. It has just become known here that she recently sent a young Greek officer to the United States with a large emerald brooch with instructions to dispose of it at the highest price.

The young man was dressed in civilian clothes and served as a mate on the steamer, which was the King Alexander. Upon arriving in New York he failed to declare the jewel, and he was arrested and imprisoned for twenty days. He was also fined $700, which was the foreign value put upon the brooch by the customs authorities. The captain of the vessel also was penalized for failing properly to acquaint passengers with American customs requirements.

The brooch, which had been in the family of the Greek Dowager for a century [4], was confiscated at the New York Custom House and, according to Paris stories, Queen Olga is now trying to find some means of retrieving it. Anti-royalists in Greece assert that the whole Greek royal family, comprising the King and Queen, seven Princes and about thirty Princesses [5], are feeling the effect of the economic distress in Greece.

Several weeks ago officials of the United States Customs Service in New York seized a lavalliere [6], with an emerald-studded pendant brooch, which they found in the possession of an electrician on board the steamship King Alexander. The jewel was appraised as having a value of more than $1,000, and it is still in possession of the government. The customs officers have disclaimed any knowledge of the history of the jewel or identity of its owner. The seizure was made on a charge of attempted smuggling.

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
2. Olga Constantinovna of Russia (1851-1926) was queen of Greece from 1867 to 1913 following her marriage to King George I. She was born a Russian grand duchess, the daughter of Grand Duke Constantine Nikolayevich and the niece of Tsar Alexander II. She was the mother of one Greek king and the grandmother of three more; she’s also the grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
3. King Constantine I of Greece (1868-1923) reigned twice as the Greek monarch, first from 1913-17 and then again from 1920-22. Both of his reigns were marked by significant periods of upheaval in Greece; he abdicated twice.
4. Today, the former king and queen of Greece still possess a parure of emerald jewelry, inherited from Olga via her son, King Constantine I. The emeralds in those pieces also came from Olga’s Romanov ancestors. It’s unclear whether the piece described here included stones from the same cache of emeralds. Olga wears some of her emerald jewels in the photograph at the top of this post.
5. When this story was published, the Greek royal family included the following members: King Constantine I, Queen Sophie, Queen Olga, Crown Prince George, Crown Princess Elisabeth, Princess Alexander (Aspasia Manos), Princess Alexandra, Crown Princess Helen of Romania, Prince Paul, Princess Irene, Princess Katherine, Prince George, Princess George (Marie Bonaparte), Prince Peter, Princess Eugenie, Prince Nicholas, Princess Nicholas (Elena Vladimirovna), Princess Olga, Princess Elizabeth, Princess Marina, Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna of Russia (Princess Marie), Prince Andrew, Princess Andrew (Alice of Battenberg), Princess Margarita, Princess Theodora, Princess Cecilie, Princess Sophie, Prince Christopher, and Princess Christopher (Nancy Leeds). The royal family would gain an additional member — Prince Philip, today the Duke of Edinburgh — in a few weeks. The tally in the paper seems to be a bit off where princesses are concerned.
6. A “lavalliere” is another term for a jeweled pendant, often worn suspended from a chain.

Review: The Queen’s Diamonds (2012)

by // Leave a Comment

The Queen’s Diamonds (2012) [1]
In 2012, Queen Elizabeth II became the second British monarch to celebrate sixty years on the throne — a Diamond Jubilee. Such an occasion required much commemorating, including festivities, pageants, concerts, parties, and museum exhibits. As the event was a Diamond Jubilee, several books on the Queen’s jewelry collection were also published to coincide with the anniversary. I’ve already reviewed two of them here — Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration and Dressing the Queen — and today, I’m reviewing the biggest and most important of the trio: Hugh Roberts’s The Queen’s Diamonds.
I’ll be frank from the start: this review is going to be glowing. Roberts’s book is the most beautifully-packaged and well-researched book in my entire collection. It’s printed on heavy, glossy paper, and it features photographs that are incredibly beautiful and detailed, including pull-out pages that provide exceptional close-ups of some of the most famous jewelry items in the royal collection (specifically, the Dagmar Necklace and the Vladimir Tiara). The text is also formatted in a way that’s very visually pleasing. This was a book that I decided to savor as soon as I opened the package, reading bits of it at a time to help to prolong the glee that accompanied reading a book that felt as fancy as this one does. And it took a while, as the book is rather enormous: it’s 320 pages long, weighs more than five pounds, and has the dimensions of a large coffee table book.

But it’s not just a pretty package with lovely pictures. Roberts, who was the Director of the Royal Collection until 2010, was granted unprecedented access to these jewels and to the people who own and preserve them, including the Queen herself. His archival research is especially wonderful, and each entry includes extensive footnotes that cite documents like original purchase orders, jewelry inventories, and notes from the jewelers who created and maintained each piece. The introduction to the book is also very helpful, providing a historical survey of the existing collection and accounting for pieces that have been lost along the way (especially those lost because of the Hanoverian claims). The appendices provide additional information, including a family tree, a glossary of related jewelry terms, and a bibliography of sources that Roberts consulted.
The jewels themselves are divided up by the women who owned them. Some of my favorite sections are the entries on the older diamonds that remain in HM’s collection, especially those owned by Queen Adelaide and Queen Victoria. The book features all of the greatest hits of the Queen’s diamonds, including the Diamond Diadem owned by George IV (seen above), the Coronation Necklace and Earrings, the Cullinan stones in their various forms, Queen Mary’s brooches, and the diamonds from the Greville inheritance. Some of the pieces included appear regularly on the Queen, while others are rarely (if ever) seen in public; all include notes on provenance and inheritance that are extremely helpful to those of us who like to research these jewels as historical heirlooms.
I tried quite hard to come up with criticisms of this text, and in the end, I suppose I have only two. The first isn’t really fair at all: I simply wish there were more of the book! Because the text accompanied the Diamond Jubilee, many items that feature colorful gemstones were left out. (Not all — for example, the Cambridge emeralds show up here because they’re a part of both the Vladimir Tiara and the Delhi Durbar Parure, the necklace from which is displayed above by curator Caroline de Guitaut.) I would have loved to have seen the Brazilian aquamarines surveyed here, as well as Queen Mary’s turquoises and the sapphires that the Queen received from her father. But it’s understandable that they were left out. The Queen’s jewelry collection is enormous, and any book has to set limits on the scope of its content. Maybe what I really want is a sequel? The Queen’s Other Non-Diamond Gems?
The other criticism is an unavoidable one: this is a very expensive book. A new copy will run you just under a hundred US dollars (although Amazon usually has it for 10% off, which is how I got my copy, and you can sometimes find other discounts from other online sellers). Because it was only published two years ago, it’s tough to find second-hand copies that have been significantly discounted. But I do think that the book itself is worth the money, both because of the excellent physical quality of the publication and because of the remarkable content. The bottom line is this: if you’re a royal jewel lover who is fascinated by the Windsor jewels, you’re going to love this book, and I think you’re going to feel as if you got your money’s worth from it. If you’re new to royal jewels, and you’re not yet sure if you want to commit such a large sum to one book, I’d recommend starting with Caroline de Guitaut’s smaller book on the diamonds, and then working from there. But if you love royal jewels, and you’re a fan of the Queen, and you’ve got a hundred spare ones laying around somewhere: get thee to the bookseller, and do it quick!

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Book cover press image from distributor; source here.