Tonight’s state banquet in Norway brought us another exciting tiara debut from Queen Mary of Denmark, plus three more gorgeous, glittering Scandinavian royal sparklers.
Twenty years ago today, Mary Elizabeth Donaldson arrived at Copenhagen’s cathedral for her wedding to the Crown Prince of Denmark. On that day, Mary made her debut in a petite diamond tiara given to her by her parents-in-law, Queen Margrethe II and Prince Henrik.
Now, exactly two decades later, Queen Mary of Denmark has made her debut in another tiara: one with major ties to the Queens of Denmark who preceded her.
The Pearl Poire Tiara takes its name from the pear-shaped pearls that are suspended from the jewel’s arched diamond-set silver frame. (La poire is French for pear, and the Danes simply call this one the “Perlepoire Diadem.”) The tiara is thought to have been made in Berlin around the year 1825.
In May 1825, 199 years ago this month, 17-year-old Princess Louise of Prussia married her first cousin, 28-year-old Prince Frederick of the Netherlands. Louise’s father, King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, and Frederick’s mother, Princess Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, were siblings. They had planned a marriage for their children for years.
As a wedding present, most people believe, King Friedrich Wilhelm offered a grand tiara to his daughter. The piece also came with a matching brooch, featuring five large pearl pendants. In the portrait above, Princess Louise wears the valuable suite of jewelry with a pearl necklace. She kept the jewels in her collection until her death in 1870.
In Princess Louise’s will, the pearl tiara and brooch were designated to be passed down to her elder daughter, Queen Louise of Sweden and Norway. But before the elder Louise’s estate could be settled, Queen Louise died in Stockholm. The pearl tiara and brooch now headed to Copenhagen, where Queen Louise’s daughter, Lovisa, had married the future King Frederik VIII of Denmark and settled two years earlier.
The tiara became a treasured reminder of two generations of Queen Lovisa of Denmark’s family. She often paired the tiara and brooch with another jewel from her personal collection that also featured pear-shaped pearls in its design: a necklace given to her as a wedding present in 1869 by the Khedive of Egypt. Later, two of the pendants from that necklace would be fashioned into earrings, and the entire set–tiara, brooch, necklace, and earrings–is now treated as a married parure.
When it came time for her to make a will, Queen Lovisa decided to designate the Pearl Poire Parure as a special set for the use of future generations of the Danish royal family. She willed the jewels to the Danish Royal Property Trust, which means that they now pass from monarch to monarch, primarily for the use of the Queen of Denmark.
After Queen Lovisa’s death in 1926, the pearls passed to her daughter-in-law, Queen Alexandrine. In the photograph above, taken during the wedding celebrations for King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid in 1935, you’ll spot Alexandrine on the right-hand side of the picture wearing the Pearl Poire Tiara and brooch with the Khedive of Egypt necklace and earrings.
After the passing of Queen Alexandrine’s husband, King Christian X, in 1947, the pearls were handed over to the new Queen Ingrid of Denmark. Above, she wears the pearls for the wedding of Princess Ragnhild of Norway, King Harald’s sister, in May 1953.
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark began wearing the Pearl Poire Tiara and jewels in 1972, shortly after the death of her father, King Frederik IX, and her subsequent accession to the throne. She chose the pearls for some of the most important moments of her reign. In January 2024, after she announced her forthcoming abdication, she wore the suite for a final time during the annual New Year’s Levee at Amalienborg.
Now, the pearls have been placed at the disposal of Margrethe’s daughter-in-law, Queen Mary of Denmark. For the banquet on Tuesday evening, she wore the tiara and earrings from the married parure. She also wore another piece sometimes associated with the parure: a large diamond and pearl cluster brooch. The brooch was Queen Lovisa’s wedding gift from her brother- and sister-in-law, Emperor Alexander III and Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia.
Mary used the brooch on Tuesday to secure the sash of the Order of St. Olav. She also wore diamond bracelets on both wrists and a pearl ring on her right hand. As a sidenote, UFO No More has confirmed that Mary is wearing a reworked version of the blue gown that she wore for the wedding of Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia of Sweden in Stockholm in June 2015. On that occasion, she also wore her wedding tiara and earrings.
There were also some spectacular Norwegian royal jewels on display at the banquet. With the vibrant orange gown that she famously wore for Crown Princess Victoria’s royal wedding in 2010, Queen Sonja was luminous in the tiara, earrings, and necklace from the Norwegian Emerald Parure.
The suite of jewelry also has links to Denmark. For years, the emerald parure was worn and loved by Princess Ingeborg of Sweden, daughter of King Frederik VIII and Queen Lovisa of Denmark. In the 1940s, she gave the jewels to her daughter, Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, as an insurance policy as she fled Europe during World War II. Thankfully, Märtha never had to sell the emeralds, and they’re still in the Norwegian family vaults today.
Crown Princess Mette-Marit opted for a more modern suite of jewelry from the family collection, wearing the tiara and earrings from the Norwegian Amethyst Parure. She also pinned an heirloom jewel to her jacket: the gorgeous diamond and aquamarine brooch that belonged to Queen Maud of Norway, who was Princess Carl of Denmark before her husband was elected to the throne of Norway in 1905.
And once again, Princess Astrid rounded out the Norwegian royal family party at the banquet. She wore her gorgeous turquoises. The turquoise and diamond circlet originally belonged to her British royal great-grandmother, Queen Alexandra, who was a daughter of King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. The rest of Astrid’s turquoise jewels are legacies from her mother, Crown Princess Märtha.
For Princess Astrid, seeing the Norwegian emeralds and the Danish pearls together during a state visit might have felt a little bit like deja vu. In 1960, the Norwegian royals welcomed their Danish counterparts to Oslo for a state visit, and Queen Ingrid was resplendent in the Pearl Poire Parure during a theatre gala.
At that time, though, it was Astrid who stepped in to represent her late mother as Norway’s senior royal lady, and she was the one who wore the emeralds for the gala. And perhaps King Harald felt a little deja vu, too–that’s him, back when he was the nation’s crown prince, peeking over into the right side of the frame.
I’ll be back here later tomorrow with jewels from the Order of the British Empire service in London. See you all then!
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