While Europe’s royals are off enjoying their August holidays, we’re going to be spending this week aboard our Tiara Time Machine, enjoying bejeweled moments from the last fifty years. Today, we’re starting off with a glamorous dinner held in 1976 in Amsterdam, featuring tiaras worn by the Queens of the Netherlands and Sweden.
Just months after their glittering royal wedding in Stockholm, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden made a glamorous state visit to the Netherlands, where they were welcomed on October 25, 1976, by Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.
Sixty-seven year old Queen Juliana was nearing the end of her reign, but King Carl XVI Gustaf, 30, had only been on his throne for three years. The state visit was the very first for 32-year-old Queen Silvia, who was pestered endlessly by the press with questions about the possibility of a forthcoming royal baby. “You shouldn’t be so inquisitive,” she chided one journalist who pressed her on the topic during the Dutch state visit. (Crown Princess Victoria was born in July 1977.)
That evening, the Swedish royals were the guests of honor at a grand state banquet at the Royal Palace, hosted by Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard with the help of two of their daughters and sons-in-law. The 38-year-old heir to the throne, Princess Beatrix, was joined by her husband, Prince Claus, and her sister and brother-in-law, Princess Margriet and Pieter van Vollenhoven, for the occasion.
There were glamorous jewels all around. The Dutch ladies raided the royal vaults and brought out the Mellerio Ruby Parure (for Juliana), Queen Emma’s Diamond Tiara (for Beatrix), and the Dutch Laurel Wreath Tiara (for Margriet). Queen Silvia memorably paired the Leuchtenberg Sapphires with a bright yellow and gold gown from Dior. A year later, the ensemble was elevated to iconic status by the Swedish drag artist Christer Lindarw, who performed as Queen Silvia in a replica of the outfit at the Oscarsteatern in front of the Queen herself.
On the second evening of the visit, both Queen Juliana and Queen Silvia wore royal emeralds for a special dinner at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’s famed art museum. During the dinner, there was a very exciting royal announcement, though not the one of that the Swedish press was hoping for. Queen Juliana shared the news that her youngest daughter, Princess Christina, was expecting her first child. The baby, Bernardo Guillermo, was born in June 1977.
The event was hosted by the Council of Ministers, the executive council of the Dutch government, which was headed at the time by Prime Minister Joop den Uyl. He was seated beside Queen Silvia during the dinner.
Queen Juliana, wearing the grand collar of Sweden’s Order of the Seraphim, reached for emerald and diamond jewels from the family vaults. Her tiara, earrings, necklace, and bracelet all come from the grand emerald and diamond parure commissioned by Queen Emma from Schürmann as a gift for her only daughter, Queen Wilhelmina. The tiara can also be worn in two other settings: one with pearls in place of the emeralds, and one with diamonds alone.
Queen Silvia, still a student of the Swedish royal collection at the time, made a strong impression in some of the grandest pieces in the family vaults. She paired Queen Sofia’s Tiara with the Karl Johan earrings and the necklace and brooch from the Bernadotte emerald suite. The tiara is the same one that, a few months later, would give her fits at the Nobel Prize banquet, leading to the construction of a new frame that would make the piece less painful to wear.
I’ll see you tomorrow for our Tiara Time Machine trip to 1986…!
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