We had an unexpected tiara appearance at tonight’s German State Banquet: Catherine in Queen Victoria’s Oriental Circlet!
Made in 1853 for Queen Victoria, it is another piece of jewellery that Prince Albert helped to design.
The Court Jeweller reports that Albert saw motifs of lotus flowers and arches during the Great Exhibition of 1851, and took these as inspiration. Set with 2,600 diamonds and opals (the Prince Consort’s favourite stones), there is a band of scrolling vines and leaves at the bottom, with large arch motifs above, which hold lotus flowers studded with ruby centres. Interspersed amongst the arches are upright leaf-like structures.
Garrard adjusted the headpiece five years later, in 1858. It is thought Victoria only wore it once, before she dressed in mourning garb – favouring her small circlet with her widow’s veil over others.
It was depicted in a 1857 drawing and portrait of the Queen.
After her death, the tiara was made an heirloom of the Crown i.e. official Monarchy property, which meant it was for Queens to wear during their tenure as Consort or Regnant.
Queen Alexandra was next to wear it, but thought opals to be unlucky, so replaced them with the rubies we see today. These may have come from a collection of Burmese stones given to Queen Victoria as a gift from the ruler of Nepal in the 1870s.
We have no evidence of Queen Mary donning the tiara, but Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, was fond of it. She wore it for a set of official portraits with Cecil Beaton in 1939, and for her 50th birthday.
Elizabeth liked it so much that, when her daughter Elizabeth II came to the throne, she allowed her mother to hang on to the tiara for her use, since she had plenty of others in the vault.
Our late Queen only wore it once, during a visit to Malta in 2005, making The Princess of Wales the first to wear the Oriental tiara in 20 years.
This is a much larger piece than Catherine normally wears, but it is also the oldest.
