Today marks the 120th Anniversary of the Birth of Princess Margarita of Greece and Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who was born on this day in 1905! The eldest sister of the Duke of Edinburgh, who became the Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Princess Margarita possessed a variety of illustrious jewels, which included Princess Alice’s Turquoise Coronet!
A Diamond Coronet featuring diamond trefoils set with what seem to turquoises, the origin of this piece is unknown but it may have been a wedding gift when Princess Alice of Battenberg married Prince Andrew of Greece in 1903, or may be among the jewels she received from her mother-in-law, Queen Olga of Greece.
Princess Alice most notably wore the Turquoise Coronet for a striking portrait at some point in the 1910s, which was discovered by British Royal Jewels, along with a necklace that was most certainly made with turquoises.
The Turquoise Coronet was likely among the jewels deposited by Prince Andrew in a bank in Paris when Princess Alice was admitted into an asylum, remaining there through the Second World War until being retrieved by Princess Alice in early 1947, ahead of the Wedding of her son, Prince Phillip, to the future Queen Elizabeth II.
Her jewels had been deposited in the Paris branch of the Westminster Bank in Andrea’s name since 1930 when she went to Kreuzlingen and the house at St Cloud was closed down. Signatures were needed from Philip and the three daughters, after which she could take possession of them. Theodora and Sophie signed promptly, while Margarita demurred, even making a claim on the estate. Eventually she too signed.
While Princess Alice’s Aquamarine Tiara was broken up to create the Engagement Ring and Diamond Bracelet, and her Diamond Meander Tiara was given by Princess Alice as a Wedding Gift to the Queen, the Turquoise Coronet seems to have ended up with her eldest daughter, Princess Margarita.
Princess Margarita most notably wore the Turquoise Coronet at the Wedding Ball of Prince Juan Carlos of Spain and Princess Sophia of Greece in 1962, when it was paired with a spectacular diamond necklace that remains a Hohenlohe-Langenburg Heirloom.
However, the Coronet seems to be among the jewels either lost during a fire at Schloss Langenburg in 1963, or sold soon after, and only some original cases remain with the Hohenlohe-Langenburg Family. Her granddaughter, Princess Cécile, talked discovering the cases in an interview:
The box was just so beautiful because for the one thing it had this Yves Klein blue lining on the inside and then there were the three trays. It was empty of course because the jewels had been being sold to support Russian family members after the revolution and then what wasn’t sold had been burned in the castle fire in 1963. So it was up to my imagination to fill the boxes because there was nothing in there other than the imprints which were sort of like echoes of past times.”
