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Review: Dressing the Queen

03.19.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Angela Kelly’s Dressing the Queen: The Jubilee Wardrobe (2013) [1]

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year inspired the publication of a trio of books dedicated to her jewels and clothing: Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration (which I reviewed earlier here), Hugh Roberts’s staggering The Queen’s Diamonds (which I will review soon), and today’s book, Dressing the Queen: The Jubilee Wardrobe. While the two books on Elizabeth II’s diamonds focus more on the history of the objects themselves, Dressing the Queen tells the story not only of her clothes and jewels but also of the staff who make her immaculate appearance possible at each public engagement.

The book was written by Angela Kelly, whose role is “Personal Assistant, Adviser and Curator to the Queen.” Because Kelly is not a historian by trade, her book is more conversational than the other, weightier tomes; it also feels more personal, and it gives some truly fascinating insights into the work that goes into creating and caring for the garments and accessories worn by the Queen. There are extensive color photographs here of the fabrics used to make the Queen’s coats and dresses, plus plenty of photographs of the designers and sewers who actually make the clothing. Incredible attention to detail is required at every stage of the creation of a single outfit, and Kelly’s book outlines the research and planning behind the work. (Plus: we get lots of photos of hats — and you know how I feel about that — and a photograph of HM’s impressive collection of plastic umbrellas!)

For jewel lovers, the book offers more than ten pages of photographs and content that present a unique behind-the-scenes look at the jewelry worn regularly by the Queen. The books on the diamonds give us a great deal of information about their history; this book shows us how they’re actually used today. The jewelry section opens with two full pages of photographs of brooches worn by the Queen, including her Cartier clips and the Victorian bow brooches. There are also detailed photos of the Queen’s rubies, aquamarines, pearls, and sapphires, plus a photograph of the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara and some of the queen’s diamond necklaces. We also get to see the way that these stunning jewels are presented to the Queen so that she can choose the specific pieces that she wants to wear: on a tray with a lace cover hand-sewn by Queen Mary.

Kelly is also the person in charge of the day-to-day maintenance of the Queen’s jewelry, including inspection and basic cleaning. (The big, complicated jewelry issues are left to the crown jeweller.) Kelly’s hands-on relationship to royal jewels gives us my favorite jewelry tidbit from this book: a series of photographs of Kelly working with the Vladimir tiara (pictured above in a photograph from 2006). The photos and accompanying text explain how Kelly swaps out the tiara’s pearls for the set of Cambridge emeralds, and the images allow you to see how the individual pearls and emeralds are stored (in numbered pouches) and how the pearls and emeralds attach to the back of the sparkler. This section is my absolute favorite part of the entire book — I love seeing the way that royal jewels “work,” for lack of a better word!

The book closes with a series of photographs of the various outfits worn by the Queen during her jubilee celebrations, including the elaborate ensemble she wore during the Thames river pageant. These outfits are discussed in minute detail, and original sketches are included. We get occasional tidbits of new info from Kelly — the way she worked directly with Danny Boyle’s team to create the perfect outfit for the complicated Olympics opening ceremony film and appearance, for example — but overall, Kelly is just as circumspect as you might expect a loyal member of the Queen’s staff to be.

This is a fun book — and a relatively inexpensive one, at under $30 for a new hardcover copy — and for those interested in royal fashion, it’s a no-brainer purchase. I also think it’s a nice addition to the collection of those who love royal jewels, too, as it provides a unique perspective on the everyday use of the jewelry. (And if the Vladimir tiara is your favorite? Buy it now!) Definitely recommended.

Dressing the Queen is available at Amazon.com (and other retailers)

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS

1. Cropped version of the cover of Dressing the Queen; source here.

Victoria Melita’s Emerald Wedding Tiara

03.18.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Victoria Melita wears the emerald tiara on her wedding day in 1894 [1]

So far, we’ve seen diamonds and sapphires from the collection of Princess Victoria Melita, who was at various times during her life a princess of Edinburgh and of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a grand duchess of Hesse, and a grand duchess of Russia. Today, we’re going to shine the spotlight on the emerald tiara she wore on her first wedding day.

Victoria Melita [3]

The diamond and emerald tiara was a wedding gift to Ducky, either from both of her parents (the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who were a British prince and a Russian grand duchess) or from just her mother. She wore the tiara on the day she married her first cousin, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse, in 1894. The match was heavily promoted by their families, and even though they didn’t dislike each other, some sources suggest that Victoria Melita was actually already smitten with her second husband (and cousin), Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia, before she married Ernie. Let’s just say that there were warning signs that this royal marriage wasn’t going to work out from the start.

Regardless, the couple went through with the ceremony, much to the delight of their mutual grandmother, Queen Victoria. The bride’s aunt Vicky (who was then the Empress Frederick of Germany) noted that Victoria Melita wore “a light slender diadem of emeralds with a sprig of orange blossom stuck in behind” as a bride, pairing the emerald tiara with a veil owned by the groom’s late mother, Princess Alice [2]. (You can see her wedding jewels in the photograph at the top of this post.) The emerald tiara is similar in design to an aquamarine diadem that belonged to Ernst’s sister, Grand Duchess Ella; however, the two are distinct pieces.

The emerald tiara was part of a suite of emerald jewels given to her by her parents on the occasion. She also received a “necklace of pearls and emeralds” (which seems to be the necklace she wears in the photograph on the left above) and a “bracelet set with a large emerald” on the day [4]. Although her marriage was not a success (for all sorts of complicated reasons), she continued to wear her wedding emeralds even after her divorce from Ernst was finalized in 1901.

The tiara, along with many of the other jewels owned by Ducky’s mother and sisters, was displayed in Coburg in 1903 as a part of a charity exhibition of the family’s possessions [5]. And she was also photographed in the tiara with her second husband, Grand Duke Kirill, which means that it was still in her possession in 1905. After that, it falls off the map. In her write-up on the emeralds, Ursula speculates Ducky had the tiara broken up sometime after her second marriage, using the stones to create a larger emerald parure. Ultimately, very few of Ducky’s jewels are still around today, largely because the family had to sell many of their most valuable possessions after the Russian revolution. I think it’s safe to say that her emerald wedding tiara has also left the family’s collection, one way or another.

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped and edited version of the Hesse wedding photo, which is now in the public domain; you can see a full version of the photograph here.
2. Vicky’s comment, made in a letter to one of her daughters, is quoted at Ursula’s site.
3. Cropped version of an image in the public domain; source here.
4. Lists of Ducky’s wedding gifts from the Illustrated London News and the Graphic are excerpted here.
5. Ursula has a feature on the 1903 Coburg exhibition; you can see the emerald tiara here.

The Order of St. Patrick

03.17.2014 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

The badge of the Order of St. Patrick [1]

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! To mark the feast day, please go outside and cast all the snakes out of your backyard, and then come back here, where we’ll take a look at the order of chivalry dedicated to the Irish saint — an order that was once used by the British to reward political loyalty and is today all but non-existent. (I’ll wait here.)

Are you back yet? Okay, let’s get to it!

King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover
wearing the mantle, collar, badge,
and star of the Order of St. Patrick.
He was made a member of the order
in 1821 [2]

In 1783, King George III founded the Most Illustrious Order of St. Patrick. It was the highest order of chivalry in Ireland, and one of the triumvirate of national chivalric orders in the UK — the English equivalent is the Order of the Garter, and the Scottish the Order of the Thistle. (And, as usual, none for poor Wales.) In precedence, it ranked below the Garter and the Thistle. The order was instituted as a means of encouraging loyalty to the crown in Ireland.

Members of the order had to be men, and more specifically, men who were “knights and gentleman.” (Women were never made members of the order. Only two women — Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II — were ever included, and that’s because they were both sovereigns.) Those who received it were recognized for their contributions to the Irish parliament. The only members ever appointed to the order already held noble or royal titles, generally Anglo-Irish peers and members of the royal family. Originally, the order was limited to the sovereign (the British monarch) and fifteen knights; George IV upped the number to twenty-one knights, and William IV formally capped the order at twenty-two. The order was conferred “at the monarch’s pleasure” — there were no “automatic” members. And unlike the Order of the Garter, royal princes counted toward the total number of members.

The first member of the order was, however, a royal prince. The fifteen original knights of St. Patrick were the Duke of Kent (father of Queen Victoria), the Duke of Leinster, the Earl of Clanricarde, the Earl of Westmeath, the Earl of Inchiquin, the Earl of Drogheda, the Earl of Tyrone, the Earl of Shannon, the Earl of Clanbrassil, the Earl of Mornington, the Earl of Arran, the Earl of Courtown, the Earl of Charlemont, the Earl of Bective, and the Earl of Ely [3]. All knights of the order were entitled to append the letters “KP” after their names and titles. They were also entitled to be called “Sir,” but as every member had a higher title, no one ever used that honorific.

Members of the order wore mantles of sky-blue satin. The insignia of the order consisted of an eight-pointed star [4], a broad riband (also in sky-blue), and a badge depicting a shamrock bearing crowns on each of its three leaves, encircled by the order’s motto, “Quis separabit?” [5] (Latin for “Who shall separate us?”) and “1783” in Roman numerals. The badge was usually worn suspended from the riband, but on certain occasions [6], it was worn suspended from a bejeweled collar. The collar consisted of Irish harps and Tudor roses interspersed with knots.

An image of a star of the Order of St. Patrick [7]

For royal jewel lovers like us, one specific version of the insignia of the Order of St. Patrick is of special interest. In 1830, William IV had a new set of insignia made for the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who was also the Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick. The star was made of 394 diamonds taken from the jewelry that had belonged to the king’s late mother, Queen Charlotte, and from one of the badges of the Order of the Bath that had belonged to his late father, King George III. The insignia pieces also included rubies and emeralds, and they were significant enough that they were sometimes called the “Irish crown jewels.”

To give you an idea of how significant diamonds from Charlotte’s collection really are, allmost no jewelry exists in the British collection today that dates back to Queen Charlotte. This is, in part, because of a suit filed by the Hanoverian royal family in the 1830s; in 1857, they were granted a number of pieces of Charlotte’s jewelry, including her small nuptial crown. (One of the only pieces of jewelry in the current Windsor collection that includes diamonds that once belonged to Queen Charlotte is Queen Adelaide’s fringe necklace/tiara, sometimes called the “Hanoverian Fringe.” Hugh Roberts speculates that the Hanoverians simply overlooked it.) Unfortunately, the St. Patrick insignia that included some of her diamonds has been MIA for more than a century. The insignia was stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907, just before Edward VII was to make a visit to Ireland, and it has never been recovered. What happened to the jewels remains a mystery to this day.

As you might have expected, the Order of St. Patrick has been dormant since roughly 1922, at the time when Ireland was partitioned and the Free State was granted independence. But there actually were knights of the order created after that date. Three British princes, all sons of George V, were made members in the ensuing years: the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) in 1927, the Duke of Gloucester in 1934, and the Duke of York (later George VI) in 1936. Bertie, the last knight to be created, was invested on St. Patrick’s Day in 1936. He was the only person added to the order by his elder brother during his brief reign, and the last person ever added to the roster by any monarch, period.

The last living member of the order was Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1974. (Well, that’s the last person invested as a member — as the order has never actually been abolished, it still has one member today: its sovereign, Elizabeth II). Every now and then, the idea of reviving the order is bandied about by members of the Irish government, although the obstacles to restarting a British order of chivalry in Ireland today is fraught with some obvious concerns. With the weight of a tragic and complicated colonial past hanging over it, I think it’s likely that this is one of so many chivalric orders that is a permanent part of history.

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of an image available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
2. Cropped version of an image available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
3. For much more on the original creation of the order, see this book on the order’s statutes, ca. 1852.
4. Here’s an example of a St. Patrick star that was sold recently at Christie’s; it was originally owned by the 1st Marquess of Clanricarde and ended up in the collection of the 6th Earl Harewood, husband of Princess Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood. It sold for more than $14,000.
5. “Quis separabit?” is also the motto of numerous military regiments, including the Irish Guards (who are being visited today by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge). And, trivia fact for the Americans among you, it’s also the motto on the seal of the state of South Carolina (which seems sort of ironic, no?).
6. These occasions were the order’s “collar days.” Some of them were regular (Anglican) religious festivals: four days in the Easter Season, Pentecost, New Year’s Day, Epiphany, Candlemas, the Feast of the Annunciation, All Saints’ Day, and Christmas Day. And then there were a number of saints’ feast days: St. Patrick, of course, plus St. Matthias, St. David, St. George, St. Mark, Sts. Philip and James, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, St. James, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Michael the Archangel, St. Luke, Sts. Simon and Jude, St. Andrew, and St. Thomas. And, finally, there were days related to UK and royal holidays: the birthdays of the King and Queen, the monarch’s accession day, the day of the monarchy’s restoration in 1660, and — intriguingly — Guy Fawkes Day.
7. Cropped version of an image available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.