Today marks the 175th Anniversary of the Birth of Queen Adelaide, who passed away on this day in 1849! The Princess of Saxe-Meiningen who was Queen of the United Kingdom and Hanover for almost seven years, Queen Adelaide is known as the beloved aunt of Queen Victoria and her jewellery legacy is the Hanoverian Fringe Tiara!
Hanoverian Fringe Tiara | George IV State Diadem | Diamond Brooch
Commissioned by King William IV for Queen Adelaide, using diamonds that belonged to King George III and Queen Charlotte, from Rundell & Bridge in 1831, the Diamond Fringe was described as:
sixty brilliant-set graduated bars, the central bars in cushion-cut and pear-shaped stones, divided by 60 graduated brilliant-set spikes; an extra six small graduated bars and five spikes detached; tiara fittings”
The Diamond Fringe was illustrated being worn as a necklace by Queen Adelaide in a couple of portraits through the 1830s, and it is one of the jewels most tied to her legacy.
Just a few years later, Queen Adelaide passed along the Diamond Fringe to Queen Victoria upon her accession to the Throne in 1837, who wore it as a Tiara later that year for a Gala Performance and regularly continued to wear the Hanoverian Fringe Tiara during the early decades of her reign, when it was one of her primary jewels.
The Hanoverian Fringe was notably worn in Winterhalter’s ‘The First of May 1851’, and to the opening of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition that year.
In later years, Queen Victoria usually wore the Hanoverian Fringe as an ornament to embellish her necklines, most notably for her Diamond Jubilee Portraits in 1897, though she also wrote about wearing the piece as a necklace in her diary.
Most of the current jewels in the British Royal Family do not predate Queen Victoria, as earlier jewels were claimed and given to the King of Hanover in 1858, which this Fringe somehow managed to escape, making the Fringe one of the oldest pieces in the Royal Collection, which was designated an heirloom of the Crown upon Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, to be passed from Sovereign to Sovereign.
The Hanoverian Fringe was most notably worn by Queen Alexandra at the waist of her gown for the Coronation of King Edward VII at Westminster Abbey in 1902.
A decade later, Queen Mary set the Hanoverian Fringe on a Tiara frame and wore it for a couple of portraits taken in the years before the First World War.
Queen Mary had her own Fringe Tiara made in 1919 (made using a wedding gift from Queen Victoria), which was later worn by the late Queen at her wedding in 1947, and has been confused with the Hanoverian Fringe Tiara for decades, even by the Palace.
The Hanoverian Fringe came into the possession of Queen Elisabeth in 1936, when it was transformed back into a necklace by Garrard, who added a “concealed snap” to the fringe, and it was one of the Crown Heirlooms she retained as Queen Mother, notably wearing it during the 1950s; for a series of Dorothy Wilding portraits, at a Banquet at Columbia University, at a Banquet in Australia, and also once with Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara.
In 2002, the historic Hanoverian Fringe finally came into the possession of the late Queen, but as she already had Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara and her own rarely worn City of London Fringe Necklace, the historic Fringe was not worn by her in public. Queen Camilla has already worn the City of London Fringe Necklace, but let’s hope she wears this historic heirloom sometime soon!
Hanoverian Fringe Tiara | George IV State Diadem | Diamond Brooch
