Today marks the 135th Anniversary of the Wedding of Princess Louise of Wales and the Duke of Fife who got married on this day in 1889! The Princess received several splendid Wedding Gifts, with the most magnificent being the spectacular Fife Tiara!
Fife Tiara | Fife Fringe Tiara | Diamond Floral Tiara
The magnificent Tiara is composed of pear-shaped diamonds hanging from a diamond framework, topped with more pear-shaped diamonds over a diamond base, and was made by Parisian Jeweller Oscar Massin.
The Tiara was given by the then 6th Earl of Fife as a wedding gift to his bride, Princess Louise of Wales, the eldest daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). Queen Victoria elevated the Earl as the 1st Duke of Fife upon his marriage to her granddaughter. Princess Louise also received the Fife Fringe Tiara from her parents and a Diamond Floral Tiara from friends.
Princess Louise, Duchess of Fife (later the Princess Royal), wore the Fife Tiara for numerous Official Portraits and at Royal events, including the Wedding of her brother, the Duke of York, and Princess May of Teck in 1893 and the Wedding of Prince Carl of Denmark and her sister, Princess Maud of Wales, in 1896.
Princess Louise also wore the Fife Tiara to the Coronation of her father, King Edward VII, in 1902 as well as for the Coronation of her brother, King George V, in 1911.
The Duke and Duchess had two daughters, Princess Alexandra and Princess Maud, before the Duke of Fife suddenly died in 1912, soon after the family was shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco, en route to Egypt. Princess Louise wore the Fife Tiara for a series of portraits as well as for the Wedding of Prince Arthur of Connaught and her daughter, Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife, in 1913, retaining the Tiara until her death in 1931.
The Fife Tiara was among the jewels inherited by Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife and Princess Arthur of Connaught who wore the Tiara with her Diamond Earrings in the Royal Box at the Coronation of her first cousin, King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth in 1937.
Around the same time, Duchess of Fife wore the Fife Tiara and the Diamond Earrings again, for a series of portraits taken in her Coronation Robes.
Following Princess Alexandra’s death in 1959, the Fife Tiara were among the jewels inherited by her nephew and heir, the 3rd Duke of Fife, and was worn by the new Duchess for several Balls in the 1960s.
The Fife Tiara was also worn by Caroline Bunting, when she married the then Earl of Macduff, now the 4th Duke of Fife, in 1987.
While the 3rd Duke sold some heirlooms, like Queen Victoria’s Turkish Diamond Parure, during the 1970s, it was only after the death of the 3rd Duke of Fife in 2015, that the Fife Tiara was accepted by Her Majesty’s Government in lieu of tax, valued at £1.4 million, and has now gone on display in the Jewel Room at Kensington Palace along with the Fife Fringe Tiara and Queen Victoria’s Emerald Parure, which are still owned by the Duke of Fife.
Fife Tiara | Fife Fringe Tiara | Diamond Floral Tiara
