Amethyst Tiaras for February
For this last week in February, I thought I'd focus on the month's birthstone, amethyst. Now, there are many amethyst tiaras out there and several royal families have more than one in their collections but you all know I'm here not only for the sparkly but also the unusual. Come see what I've found!
Isn't this wonderful? It lives at the London Museum and is categorized as a comb mount OR tiara front. It was made around 1835-1845 and, in addition to amethysts, it also has almandine garnets, peridots, aquamarines, chrysophrases, citrines, turquoises and pearls. I can just imagine the type of hairstyle you'd need to support this! According to the information on the museum site, this is 141 mm high and 280 mm wide (translated to freedom units that's 5.5 inches high and 11 inches wide).
This is Princess Marie of Denmark's Amethyst Lily Tiara. It was created with input from Princess Marie and she has exclusive rights to wear it although the firm that created it, Flora Danica, still owns it. Amethysts are apparently Marie's favorite stone and the lillies are a call out to her French heritage. There are 3 of them to represent her, her husband, Prince Joachim and her son, Prince Henrik (the tiara was made before she had her daughter, Athena). In most of the pictures I've found of the tiara, the lillies look dark but I think they are just picking up color from their surroundings. If you check the source link there are a couple of other pictures of the tiara that show how silvery the lillies really are.
Next we have a tiara/comb (you can see the teeth of the comb in the back if you look carefully) from the 19th century. It is owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston but is not on display. According to their collection entry, this is made of gilt metal, amethyst, painted ivory and glass paste. I love the little pink flowers! I don't know, they look a little primitive and I like that juxtaposition with the relative ornateness of the rest of the tiara.
I originally found images of just the tiara and was going to use one of those but then I came across this photo of the entire parure and WOW! Just look at it! It's so luscious! I had to show the whole thing off. The parure consists of the tiara, a necklace with detachable pendant, earrings and what I thought was a brooch but the description from the source link says is a belt buckle. Made circa 1835 by Köchert, an Austrian jeweler (still in business today) that has made many, many tiaras for royal families.
This last tiara I'm showing off is pretty special in that the jeweler who created it was a woman. This is a first in my tiara wanderings! Mrs. Newman became the first woman to be admitted to the Guild of Goldsmiths and, after the jeweler she trained under and worked with passed away, she opened her own shop. There's a link down in the rabbit hole about her and not only is it a fascinating read, there are many pictures of the other beautiful jewelry she designed (alas, no other tiaras). I love the rich colors in this tiara and the Byzantine look to it.
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