Henriette of Belgium as Duchess of Vendôme, ca. 1910 [1] |
Saturday Sparkler: Queen Victoria’s Emerald and Diamond Tiara
Queen Victoria depicted in her emerald and diamond tiara, ca. 1846 [1] |
Some of my favorite royal tiaras are the sparklers designed for Queen Victoria by her beloved Prince Albert. Today, let’s have a gander at the lovely little emerald and diamond tiara that he designed for his wife.
The piece was crafted by the jeweler Joseph Kitching based on plans drawn up by Albert. Kitching made the tiara in 1845 for around a thousand pounds. The tiara, which features a geometric base topped by large emeralds, has been identified as one of the queen’s favorite pieces of jewelry. Indeed, she was painted in it twice, most notably by Winterhalter in The Royal Family (1846). But unlike many British royal tiaras, the chain of ownership of this piece is incredibly tricky. The last statement on the current ownership of the tiara came in 2001, when it was photographed for Tiaras: A History of Splendour, the expansive book that accompanied Geoffrey Munn’s exhibit of tiaras at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Munn notes in the book that the tiara belongs to a descendant of Queen Victoria without offering the person’s name.
So who was that family member? And how did it get to that person? There are a few bits of evidence that we can piece together to try to establish the tiara’s journey. One of them is a notable omission. We know that it wasn’t a part of the 1896 inventory of the queen’s jewels made by Garrard, which has led some to claim that the tiara was given to a family member before that period. That inventory also omitted other pieces, including the sapphire coronet that now belongs to the Harewood family, so its exclusion from the list does not necessarily mean that Victoria gave the tiara away before 1896. But it’s a good place to start.
The tiara appears in a photograph of one of Victoria’s granddaughters, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, which was taken in the 1880s. But as Princess Victoria (who was the grandmother of the Duke of Edinburgh) is apparently dressed for a costume ball in the photograph, it’s possible that she was simply borrowing the piece. The links get even fuzzier when you consider that the most recent person to have been photographed in the tiara was from a completely different branch of Queen Victoria’s family: Caroline Worsley, who was the wife of the Duke of Fife when she wore the tiara to the State Opening of Parliament in 1960. (The couple divorced six years later, and Caroline has since remarried.) The current Duke of Fife is a descendant of Victoria through her eldest son, Edward VII; his grandmother was Louise, the Princess Royal. Did Victoria perhaps give the tiara to Louise?
In the photograph, you can clearly see that Caroline is wearing not only the tiara but also a necklace and brooch that look suspiciously like the ones worn by Queen Victoria in this portrait. The fact that the Carnegies may have had access in the 1960s to all three of the pieces leads me to believe that the tiara may still have been in their possession when Munn wrote his book. This branch of the family has been less candid when it comes to the jewels in their possession than some other descendants of Queen Victoria. For example, we’ve only been able to establish that the famous Fife tiara remains with the family based on photographs of Carnegie brides who have worn the piece. With that in mind, it seems entirely possible to me that the duke might not have wanted to make his ownership of this tiara clear.
There were major rumors that this tiara was sold and possibly even dismantled in the years following its two most recent public appearances (in a Munn-curated exhibition at Wartski in 1997, and in Munn’s 2001 book). Happily, though, they turned out to be false! The tiara still exists, and it went on display with the rest of the pieces of the accompanying parure at Kensington Palace in March 2018.
NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Detail from Winterhalter’s The Royal Family (1846); source here.
2. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in August 2013.
Princess Louise’s Forget-Me-Not Tiara
Princess Louise, Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife, ca. 1905 [1] |
In 2012, a new theory emerged about this tiara’s fate. That year, Lady Mary Crawley, one of the main characters in Downton Abbey, the famous ITV period drama, wore a diamond floral spray tiara in her wedding on the show. That tiara was borrowed by the production company from Bentley & Skinner, a London-based firm that acquires and sells antique jewels. They describe Lady Mary’s wedding tiara as an “important Georgian diamond tiara, the tiara in the form of a garland spray of leaves and floral clusters, pave-set throughout with old-cut diamonds, weighing an estimated total of 45 carats, cutdown collet-set in silver to a yellow gold mount, convertible to two brooches, gross weight 75.5 grams on frame, circa 1800” [3].
The tiara currently owned by Bentley & Skinner is not linked by the firm to the diamond spray worn by Princess Louise. However, an article in the Daily Mail claims that the two are indeed the same piece. They call it the “myrtle tiara” and note that it was a gift from the Sassoons to the princess; they also note that it can be dismantled and worn as a set of brooches, “which Princess Louise often did” [4]. The Mail article doesn’t give sources for the information, though as the piece involves its writer, Petronella Wyatt, trying on the tiara under the watchful gaze of a public relations rep from Bentley & Skinner, it seems plausible that they may have shared the information with the paper.
Other jewel watchers aren’t sure about the connection; posters at the Royal Jewels of the World forum have examined the two pieces and decided that there are significant differences between the two [5]. I think it’s also plausible, though, that as Louise received diamond floral sprays from two different guests at her wedding, she may be wearing one spray (possibly the one given to her by Farquhar) in the 1905 photo, while the second, slightly different piece is now owned by Bentley & Skinner (and available for you to rent out for a mere £1,750 a day — plus a £126,000 deposit! [6]). It’s tough to say for certain, but I am sort of glad that a piece that was perhaps formerly worn by royalty is still accessible to the public today — even if it’s only on television on Sunday evenings.
NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of a photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
2. See more, including additional photos, at Ursula’s website.
3. The Bentley & Skinner page on the tiara, including a set of photos, can be seen here.
4. You can read the full piece on the tiara from the Mail on their website.
5. Here’s the relevant thread from the message board.
6. Here are the details, again from the Mail.