Today marks the 130th Anniversary of the Birth of Queen Elisabeth of Greece, who was born on this day in 1894! The controversial Romanian Princess who became a short-tenured Greek Queen and then the wealthy ‘Red Aunt’ of the last Romanian King, Queen Elisabeth did not have many jewels but once wore Queen Marie of Romania’s Cartier Pearl Tiara!
Greek Emerald Parure | Queen Marie of Romania’s Cartier Pearl Tiara | Cartier Sapphire Necklace
While the exact origin of this striking Pearl and Diamond Tiara is unknown, it could have been among the Wedding Gifts when Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia married Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh in 1874, which is said to have been created by the famed House of Fabergé.
Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna notably wore the Fabergé Pearl and Diamond Tiara for the Wedding of the Grand Duke of Hesse, to her daughter, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1894 and the Wedding of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein and Princess Dorothea of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1898.
In 1903, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna and her daughters loaned their Jewellery to a Charity Exhibition in Cobourg, which included her Fabergé Pearl and Diamond Tiara alongside her Fringe Tiara, Queen Marie of Romania’s Diamond Loop Tiara, and Grand Duchess Victoria Melita’s Emerald Tiara.
When Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna passed away in Switzerland in 1920, reportedly after receiving a telegram addressed to ‘Frau Coburg’, the Fabergé Pearl Tiara, a pair of pearl earrings, a necklace and two pearl brooches were among the jewels inherited by her elder daughter, Queen Marie of Romania, whose own jewels had been sent to Russia for safekeeping during the First World War, which was later seized by the Bolsheviks and has yet to be returned. When the pearls were to be appraised, Queen Marie noted one of them alone was deemed to be worth 400 000 swiss francs, and had her mother’s Fabergé Tiara reset into another striking Tiara at Cartier in Paris.
While not a favourite like her Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik acquired at the same time, the Cartier Pearl Tiara was frequently worn by Queen Marie for portraits and galas, usually paired with her mother’s strings of pearls and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna’s Pearl Brooch.
The Cartier Pearl and Diamond Tiara was notably loaned by Queen Marie to her elder daughter, Queen Elisabeth of Greece, the short-lived Consort of King George II of Greece, for the Coronation of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie of Romania in 1922. Despite being the source of inspiration behind the Greek Emerald Tiara, she had relatively few jewels, and anyways, the emeralds had not been set in a frame by 1922.
Queen Marie wore the Cartier Pearl and Diamond Tiara on her 1926 Tour of the United States and also for the Wedding Ball of Princess Ileana of Romania and Archduke Anton of Austria in 1931.
At Queen Marie’s death in 1938, Queen Marie’s Diamond Sautoir went to her former daughter-in-law, Queen Helen, her Fringe Tiara went to her daughter, Queen Maria of Yugoslavia, and her Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik went to her favourite daughter, Princess Ileana, so it is likely that the Cartier Pearl and Diamond Tiara was inherited by Princess Elisabeth, by then divorced.
A decade later, the Romanian Royal Family was forced into exile by the Communist Government, and if she managed to smuggle the Cartier Pearl Tiara out of the country, as is likely suspected, Princess Elisabeth probably sold the piece during her exile, or left it to her lover, Marc Favrat, who she adopted three months before her death in 1956.
Greek Emerald Parure | Queen Marie of Romania’s Cartier Pearl Tiara | Cartier Sapphire Necklace
