The Angoulême Emerald Tiara

Photos (clockwise from top left): tiara detail; Princess Marie Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême; tiara detail; tiara detail

There are tiaras, and then there are tiaras that belonged to the daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Let's wrap up the week with a look at the emerald tiara that their eldest daughter, the Duchess of Angoulême, wore, shall we? Buckle up, readers -- this is quite the tiara tale!

Princess Marie-Thérèse was born at Versailles; she was a teenager when her family was imprisoned and her parents were executed. She was the only member of her immediate family to survive the Terror. After she was released by the French government, she moved to live with her uncle, the Count of Provence. Provence became the pretender king after Marie-Thérèse's younger brother died; he arranged for Marie-Thérèse to marry his nephew (and her first cousin), Louis-Antoine, the Duke of Angoulême. (As is the case with many royal arranged marriages, it wasn't exactly a success.)

Anyway, in the fullness of time, the monarchy in France was restored, Uncle Provence officially became Louis XVIII, and Marie-Thérèse needed a tiara. The piece was created by Bapst in 1820 using emeralds from the royal collections. The tiara was a part of the crown jewels from the start, which meant that it was always French property, never Marie-Thérèse's personal possession. The geometric design of the piece is similar to that of the Norwegian emerald tiara -- both were created in France at roughly the same time, and perhaps even by the same jeweler.

Louis XVIII died in 1824, and Marie-Thérèse's uncle/father-in-law (sigh), Charles X, became king. For Marie-Thérèse, this meant a change in position, too -- she was now the dauphine of France. But we all know what eventually happened to the French monarchy. By 1830, Charles X had been pressured into abdicating. Marie-Thérèse was queen of France for precisely 20 minutes: the time that elapsed between Charles X signing his abdication papers and Marie-Thérèse's husband reluctantly doing the same.

This meant exile again for Marie-Thérèse, this time to Britain. But she didn't take her tiara with her -- remember that it was French property. She left it behind, and years later, after yet another restoration of monarchy in France, it became a favorite piece of the red-haired Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. When he was ousted in 1870, the tiara again stayed in France with the crown jewels.

The Angoulême Tiara went on display with the rest of the crown jewels at the Louvre in the 1880s, but by 1887, the French government had decided it was time to rid themselves of the collection once and for all. They'd threatened to sell before, but this time it was for real: the tiara was sold at auction to a Mr. Bachruch. Shortly afterward, the tiara popped up in Britain; it was supposedly owned by the earls of Durham, but the precise chain of ownership is a bit unclear (maybe purposefully so). In 1982, nearly a century later, the owners allowed the tiara to be displayed at the V&A in London, and it remained at the museum for twenty years. And then they decided it was time to sell. Any guesses who the buyer was this time?

... that's right: the Louvre! More than a century after it left France, the tiara was back home. The British government tried in vain to find a buyer who could keep the valuable piece in the UK, but the French won the tiara this time. Next time you're in Paris, head to the Louvre and give it a visit. It's never been altered, so you'll be able to stand in a former royal palace and see the exact tiara that Marie Antoinette's daughter, the Twenty-Minute Queen, wore once upon a time. Très magnifique!

For more on this tiara:
Diadème de la duchesse d'Angoulême

Marie-Therese, Duchesse d'Angouleme Emerald and Diamond Tiara

The Henckel von Donnersmarck Emerald Tiara

Photos (clockwise from top left): tiara shown with model; Katharina Henckel von Donnersmarck; tiara detail; tiara detail

When you're the wife of one of the richest men in the world, it only seems fair that you should be given a truly remarkable tiara. But I'll bet even Katharina Henckel von Donnersmarck never predicted that her emerald and diamond tiara would one day be the most expensive tiara ever sold at auction.

Katharina received the tiara from her husband, Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. The Henckel von Donnersmarcks are an old German noble family; by the end of the nineteenth century, they were the second wealthiest family in the entire country (second only to the Krupps -- ever heard of a little gem called the Krupp diamond?). Guido made his fortune as an industrialist, and he could certainly afford to keep the women he loved dripping in jewels. His first wife, Pauline, was a famous French courtesan who was better known as "La Païva." Guido was obsessed with her -- so much so that, rumor has it, he kept her body in a large glass container of embalming fluid, weeping over her corpse each night. As one does, I suppose.

Perhaps a tiara made from some of the world's rarest emeralds was a mea culpa from Guido to his second wife, Katharina? After all, she did have to put up with a corpse-worshipping spouse. Whatever the motive behind the gift, the tiara is undoubtedly a stunner. It was made at the turn of the twentieth century, perhaps the work of Chaumet. The eleven emeralds weigh more than 500 carats, and they supposedly once belonged to Empress Eugénie of France (there are various theories about how Guido got the emeralds, but he had a history with Eugénie's jewels -- he once bought pearls from her collection for La Païva). The base of the tiara features a series of large cushion-cut diamonds resting atop a row of diamond laurels.

When the family decided to sell their tiara in 1979, they turned to Sotheby's; it was purchased that November by a private buyer. And when that owner decided to sell, it was Sotheby's again who handled the sale. Everyone expected the tiara to fetch a bundle -- the pre-auction estimates were for between five and ten million dollars. But when the gavel fell on this lot in 2011, a private buyer had splashed out a whopping $12.7 million on Katharina's tiara. It was a world record price for a tiara sold at auction. We don't know who purchased the piece, but it's suspected that the buyer hails from North America. Here's hoping he or she will want to loan the tiara to a museum some day soon so the rest of us can ogle the emeralds too!

For more on this tiara:
A Magnificent and Rare Emerald and Diamond Tiara
Tiara fetches world record $12.76 million

The Flame Tiara

Photos (clockwise from top left): tiara detail; Princess Shams of Iran; tiara detail; tiara detail; tiara detail

When the last shah of Iran was crowned as the country's emperor in 1967, the ladies of the imperial family went on a tiara shopping spree. One of the tiaras commissioned especially for the occasion was this emerald and diamond piece, the tiara of Princess Shams.

Shams, who was the elder sister of the shah, ordered her tiara from Van Cleef & Arpels. The piece takes its name from its design, which includes square-cut emeralds set atop diamond flames, plus a large pear-shaped emerald at the top of the piece and an enormous square-cut emerald set in its center. It was a part of a parure that also included a matching necklace and earrings.

Princess Shams wore the tiara at her brother's coronation, but when the family left Iran after the revolution in 1979, it stayed behind. Today it is state property, and it is on display with the rest of the crown jewels at the Central Bank in Tehran.

For more on this tiara:

Emerald & Diamond Flame Tiara

The Norwegian Emerald Parure Tiara

Photos (clockwise from top left): Princess Ingeborg of Sweden; Queen Sonja of Norway; Crown Princess Märtha of Norway; Queen Sofia of Sweden; tiara detail

The tiara that belongs to the Norwegian royal family's emerald parure is a pretty divisive one -- either you love the piece, with its geometric emeralds, or you don't. It's also a tiara about which much has been incorrectly written, especially regarding its provenance.

It's often said that this tiara, which some sources suggest was made by Bapst, was a gift from Empress Joséphine, first wife of Napoleon, to her namesake granddaughter, Queen Josefina of Sweden and Norway (born Princess Joséphine of Leuchtenberg). And while I do love a good Bonaparte-related provenance, that seems to not be the case for this piece. At one point, Josefina's mother, the Duchess of Leuchtenberg, definitely owned the tiara -- she also definitely left it to Josefina's elder sister, Amélie (who was the empress of Brazil), when she died in 1851.

When Amelie died in 1873, she left this tiara (along with the Braganza -- that's a pretty good tiara haul) to her sister. Josefina didn't have long to enjoy her new jewels; she died a mere three years later. The emeralds were inherited by her daughter-in-law, Queen Sofia. And then Sofia gave the tiara to her daughter-in-law, Princess Ingeborg of Denmark, who was married to Sofia's son, Prince Carl. (Before she died in 1913, however, Sofia lent the tiara to another Swedish princess, Crown Princess Margaret. She wore it to the coronation of George V in 1911 -- remember this Connaught family photo?)

Carl and Ingeborg's marriage was arranged, but by all accounts it was happy. One of their daughters, Astrid, married King Leopold III of Belgium; another, Märtha, married Crown Prince Olav of Norway (the future King Olav V). Märtha was the one who brought the tiara back to Norway. Many have said that the tiara was a present from Ingeborg to her daughter to celebrate the birth of Märtha's only son, Harald (the country's current king). In reality, Ingeborg apparently gave the tiara to her daughter at the dawn of World War II, hoping that Märtha could sell off the parure if the situation for the family became too dire.

It didn't, and the tiara stayed with the family. Crown Princess Märtha died before she could become queen, but her son inherited this tiara from his mother, and today his wife, Queen Sonja, wears the piece regularly. Sonja has been known to wear some unusual color combinations with these green gems. But whether the square stones strike your fancy or not, there's no denying that this tiara packs a major provenance punch.

For more on this tiara:
Mad Hattery's TiaraPedia (Norway)
Joséphine’s Emerald Parure

Royal jewels: The Norwegian emerald parure

The Boucheron Black Emerald Tiara

Photos (clockwise from top left): Queen Rania of Jordan; tiara detail; tiara detail; Queen Rania of Jordan

Let's start this week of tiaras with something a bit different, shall we? One of the most unusual tiaras ever to grace a royal head has to be this Boucheron piece, worn by the always-lovely Queen Rania of Jordan back in 2003.

The very modern tiara gets its unique look from the metal from which it is made: black gold. It's also unusual to see a tiara set only with colored gems -- no diamonds here, only a wreath of emeralds in the form of the tiara's ivy and buds. It was designed for Boucheron by Solange Azagury-Partridge, the company's former creative director.

To my knowledge, Rania only wore the tiara in public once: at a state banquet during the Jordanian state visit to Sweden in October 2003. (She was also photographed in it for a magazine.) It makes sense, though, that it's not reappeared on Rania: the tiara was apparently only on loan to her from Boucheron. Rania has borrowed rather than purchased major pieces from jewelry firms more than once, although she does own a few tiaras of her own. It's not known precisely what happened to this piece after it returned to Boucheron; it was prominently displayed on their website for a while, but today, the whereabouts of this unique emerald sparkler are unknown.

Weekend Bonus: The Belgian Scroll Tiara

Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg (1927-2005) wears the Belgian Scroll Tiara at her wedding to Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg (born 1921) in 1953

Weekend Bonus: The Queen Alexandra Kokoshnik Tiara

Queen Mary of the United Kingdom (1867-1953) wears the Queen Alexandra Kokoshnik Tiara; her necklace is Queen Alexandra's collier résille.