Our August birthday tiara tributes continue today with a special sparkling outing from Princess Irene, aunt of the King of the Netherlands, during an important family anniversary gala in Amsterdam.
Photographers snapped Princess Irene, who celebrated her 87th birthday on August 5, leaving the Royal Palace in Amsterdam on the night of April 30, 1962, on her way to an important family event. Irene, who was then 22, was joined by her parents, 53-year-old Queen Juliana and 50-year-old Prince Bernhard, and her sisters, Princess Beatrix (24), Princess Margriet (19), and Princess Christina (15).
The event was a gala at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam’s exceptional concert hall. April 30 was Queen Juliana’s birthday, and the nation celebrated Koninginnedag on the day each year during her reign. (Later, her daughter Beatrix kept the celebrations on that date because her birthday falls in January.) In 1962, the celebrations were particularly special, because they were also used to mark Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard’s silver wedding anniversary.
Royals from around the world arrived for more celebrations the following day, but on April 30, the royal couple and their daughters were present for the presentation of the a special silver wedding gift at the concert hall: a 240-piece porcelain dinner service, made in France in the eighteenth century and painted with scenes from Dutch history. The impressive set was a gift from the people of Amsterdam.
For the concert, Queen Juliana was decked in diamonds from head to toe. She wore the full setting of the grand Stuart Tiara, the jewel made in 1897 by Schürmann to house the historic Stuart Diamond. That gem, a sea-green pear-shaped diamond that weighs in at just under 40 carats, is the same one acquired by King William III of Great Britain for his wife, Queen Mary II, in 1690. The couple had no children, and when William died in 1702, all of their property, including the diamond, was sent to his cousin, the new Prince of Orange, in the Netherlands. It’s been with the Dutch royal family ever since.
Juliana wore the complete parure created by Schürmann, including the necklace and large corsage ornament, for the concert gala. She also added more family diamonds, including nineteenth-century diamond earrings that belonged to her mother, Queen Wilhelmina. On her right wrist, she wore the grand Dutch East Indies Bracelet, one of her wedding gifts, which has since been broken up into two smaller, more wearable bracelets.
On her left wrist she wore the impressive diamond floral watch that she received as a 50th birthday gift from the people of the Netherlands in 1959. And there was one more sparkling addition to her ensemble: a new aquamarine and diamond brooch, given to her by Prince Bernhard as a silver wedding present. She pinned the brooch to her handbag for the gala.
Bernhard and Juliana’s four daughters also dipped into the family vaults for the occasion. The eldest, Princess Beatrix, wore pearls, including the Antique Pearl Tiara. She also added pearl drop earrings, a two-row pearl necklace, and a diamond and pearl brooch.
Princess Irene, the second of the Queen’s four daughters, wore a set that was a particular favorite of hers in her younger years: the married parure of aquamarines that her mother had assembled over the decades. Irene wore the tiara, which features aquamarine briolettes set on a diamond base, which was Juliana’s eighteenth-birthday present from her parents, Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Hendrik, in 1927.
Irene also added two aquamarine bracelets, aquamarine earrings given to Juliana as a wedding present by her mother-in-law in 1937, and a necklace with an enormous pear-shaped aquamarine pendant. The pendant was also one of Juliana’s wedding gifts, presented to her by Prince Bernhard.
The youngest members of the family were appropriately bejeweled, too. Princess Margriet paired her floral gown with the family’s diamond and emerald tiara, made in 1900 for Queen Wilhelmina, and the earrings made by repurposing two of the tiara’s pear-shaped emerald and diamond toppers. A small ribbon brooch added extra interest near the neckline of the dress.
And beside her, Princess Christina, still too young for tiaras, wore pearls—and her headband was given an age-appropriate upgrade with the addition of a small jeweled cluster.
The event would mark one of the first—and last—big gala events where the entire family appeared together in an official capacity. Not long after these silver wedding celebrations, Princess Irene headed to Madrid to study Spanish. There, she met and fell in love with Prince Carlos Hugo of Bourbon-Parma, the Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne.
Irene’s secret conversion to Catholicism, and her subsequent engagement and marriage, caused a scandal back home in the Netherlands. The couple had four children, but after their divorce in 1980, Irene moved with her sons and daughters back to the Netherlands. She maintains close ties to her sisters, Beatrix and Margriet, and her nieces and nephews, including King Willem-Alexander.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.