Amazing Aquamarines for Queen Maxima’s Finnish Welcome Ceremony

Our Queen Máxima jewelry catch-up continues with a recent appearance from a gorgeous suite of Dutch royal aquamarines, worn to welcome the President of Finland to the Netherlands.

On Thursday, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands were in Amsterdam for the start of a state visit with the President of Finland. President Alexander Stubb and his wife, Suzanne Innes-Stubb, began their visit with a traditional welcome ceremony outside the Royal Palace in Dam Square.

For the daytime events of the first day’s program, Queen Máxima wore an ensemble in shades of light blue and dark green. She wrapped up warmly in a green Max Mara coat, which coordinated with her Philip Treacy hat, as well as her clutch bag, her gloves, and her heels.

Beneath the coat, Máxima wore a vintage-inspired jacket and skirt from Natan. The jacket features design elements that reference the famous bar jackets made in the 1950s by Dior, and the full skirt has a high-low hemline. On her jacket, Máxima pinned the miniature ribbon of her Finnish decoration, the Order of the White Rose of Finland.

Máxima coordinated her jewelry to the icy blue color of the jacket and skirt, wearing diamond and aquamarine pieces from a married parure of jewelry assembled during the last century by her husband’s grandmother, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.

Queen Juliana, who reigned as the Dutch monarch from 1948 until 1980, received numerous pieces of diamond and aquamarine jewelry as gifts over her lifetime. Though the jewels weren’t designed at the same time by the same firm as matching pieces from a coordinated parure, Juliana liked to wear them as a set, and subsequent Dutch royal ladies have followed her lead. In the picture above, taken on Prinsjesdag in 1968, she wears the same earrings and pendants worn by Máxima last week.

Here’s a closer look at the pieces chosen by Máxima from the set to welcome the President of Finland. She wore the aquamarine briolette drops on a pair of long earrings with round diamond “strings.” The briolettes were given to Juliana by her mother-in-law, Princess Armgard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, as a wedding present in 1937.

Máxima used one of the family’s diamond ribbon brooches as an anchor for Juliana’s beautiful pear-shaped aquamarine pendant, which features a thin border of diamond around the enormous gemstone. The pendant also dates to 1937 and was part of Juliana’s wedding gift haul.

Of course, the welcome ceremony was just a preview of the bejeweled splendor that was to come later in the day. In case you missed it, hop over to my earlier article all about the jewels worn for Thursday evening’s state banquet, which featured both Queen Máxima and Princess Amalia wearing spectacular Dutch heirloom tiaras.