A Special Sapphire Brooch for Queen Camilla on Holocaust Memorial Day

On Tuesday, King Charles III and Queen Camilla hosted a reception in honor of Holocaust Memorial Day, and Camilla chose heirloom sapphire jewels for the event.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla hosted a reception on Tuesday for Holocaust survivors and their family members, as well as representatives from patronages including the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Anne Frank Trust UK and The Holocaust Educational Trust.

Art was a focus of the event. During the reception, Charles and Camilla viewed Anne Frank: Resistance, a portrait of Anne Frank by Peter Sacks that was created for the Anne Frank Trust. Here, they’re pictured with the painting and two representatives of the trust, Nicola Cobbold and Dan Green.

Seven more important portraits were also on display during the reception. These paintings, which were commissioned by Charles when he was Prince of Wales, depict Holocaust survivors who have been honored for services to Holocaust awareness and education. Here, Charles chats with the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the last remaining survivor of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, near her portrait.

And here, Queen Camilla meets Holocaust survivor Helen Aronson, who wore a gorgeous pair of diamond earrings and a pin in the shape of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust emblem.

Queen Camilla’s dark blue ensemble and jewelry were clearly thoughtfully chosen for the event. She paired modern earrings with a special royal heirloom brooch for the occasion.

With her Fabergé Impératrice earrings, Camilla wore the Hesse Diamond Jubilee Brooch, which was given to Queen Victoria by a group of her grandchildren in 1897 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of her reign.

Here’s a closer look at the brooch, which features the number 60 (Ѯ) in Cyrillic numerals, rendered in diamonds and surrounded by a heart. Three cabochon sapphires are also set in the brooch: one at the top of the piece, and two more as négligée-style pendants.

The brooch was given to Victoria by the surviving children of her second daughter, Princess Alice, who married Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine in 1862. Alice passed away in 1878, leaving behind five children: Victoria (later Princess Louis of Battenberg, and then Marchioness of Milford Haven); Ella (later Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia); Irene (later Princess Henry of Prussia); Ernest Louis (later Grand Duke of Hesse); and Alix (later Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia).

The brooch gift was attributed to four of the Hesse grandchildren and their spouses: Prince and Princess Louis of Battenberg, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia, Grand Duke Ernest Louis and Grand Duchess Victoria Melita of Hesse, and Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. The use of Cyrillic numerals in the brooch suggests that Ella and Alix, who both married into the Romanov family, had a great deal to do with its design.

Queen Camilla has been wearing the brooch for almost two decades. She made her first public appearances in the jewel as Duchess of Cornwall, shortly after her marriage to the future King Charles III, in 2007. Above, she wears the brooch during a royal tour of Canada in the autumn of 2009.

Her most significant appearance in the brooch, however, came shortly after Charles’s accession to the throne. Camilla chose to wear the brooch for the state funeral of her mother-in-law, the late Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022.

The earrings that Camilla wore with the brooch for the Holocaust Memorial Day reception are newer additions to her jewelry box. These are the Impératrice Tassel Earrings from the Fabergé Imperial collection, made of diamonds set in white gold with sapphire cabochon tassels. The heart motif at the top of the earrings, and the use of sapphire cabochons, make them a natural pairing with the Hesse brooch.

We first saw Camilla wear these earrings in public last year. She brought them out in February for a reception at Buckingham Palace celebrating the work of the National Theatre, and she wore them again in March for the annual Commonwealth Day reception at Marlborough House.

PS: It’s Wednesday, which means that the free mid-week edition of Hidden Gems will be dropping in your email inboxes this morning! We’ve got updates on the auction of Queen Fabiola’s jewels, plus a look at the way I’ve tried to occupy myself while snowed in for the last four days (!).