The Manchester Tiara

Photos (clockwise from top left): tiara detail; tiara detail; Helena Montagu, Duchess of Manchester; tiara detail

If you're a fan of Downton Abbey or the novels of Edith Wharton, you'll be familiar with the stories of American heiresses who married titled, impoverished Englishman. This tiara belonged to an extremely rich American woman, Consuelo Ynzaga de Valle, who did just that.

Born in Louisiana, Consuelo was the daughter of a Cuban diplomat and his American wife. She was one of the first of the "buccaneers," women who crossed the Atlantic to marry into aristocratic English families. In 1876, she married Viscount Mandeville, who later succeeded his father as Duke of Manchester. But the marriage was short-lived, as the duke died in 1892.

Consuelo, now the dowager duchess, was too young and vibrant to go away quietly. She became a close friend of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and she continued to move in vaunted social circles. And in 1903, she decided that she wanted a new tiara. She commissioned Cartier in Paris to make this gigantic sparkler, which is set with more than a thousand diamonds (most of which she supplied herself -- not too shabby). The tiara is also an unusually wide piece, set on a smaller suspended base.

If you'd like to marvel at this tiara in person, you're in luck: today, the piece is a part of the collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It's actually owned by the British government, which accepted the tiara in lieu of inheritance taxes from the Manchester family. Ah, nobility.

For more on this tiara:
V&A: Manchester Tiara