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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
The third stone cut from the great Cullinan Diamond is drop-shaped like the largest of the group. Weighing 94.4 carats, it was available in 1911 and suitably ostentatious for the new crown to be made for the coronation of Queen Mary, consort of George V. As a matter of fact, ...
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Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
France once had its share of glorious state wedding bands. Louis XIV enjoyed diamonds immensely. Tavernier has reported in some detail a thousand diamonds he sold to the French king. Among them was the great French Blue Diamond, which had originally weighed 112!4 carats when brought from India in 1642. ...
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Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Empress Cunegunde's Crown is the oldest in the diamond earrings collection. She was the wife of Henry II, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire from A.D. 1002 to 1024. It is a simple circlet of five curved gold plates hinged together and bespangled with sapphires, amethysts, and topazes. Lovely as ...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
The Empress Farah Diba's Crown and the Empress herself attracted much of the attention at coronation time. However, the Shahanshah and his crown were the prime reason for the event. The Pahlevi Crown, as it is known, was made for Reza Shah, the father of the present Shah, who overthrew ...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
Interestingly, the Imperial State Crown is not worn at the actual moment of coronation of English monarchs. They wear the much more symbolic Crown of St. Edward. In a way, Edward's crown is a counterfeit. There was a crown used for Edward the Confessor's coronation in 1043, and it is ...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
The second of the Cullinan stones weighs only 317.4 carats, but is still the second-largest cut diamond in the world. Room was made for this wedding band on the front of the headband of the Imperial State Crown, originally made for Queen Victoria in ...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
The third best-known of the diamonds, but by no means the third largest in the collection, is the Russian Table Portrait Diamond. This is an irregularly shaped, thin, flat tablet which seems to be a cleavage piece from some larger stone. An Indian cheap engagement ring, weighing about 25 carats, ...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
Another of these is the Shah Diamond, which was recovered about five hundred years ago in Central India. This stone weighs 88.7 carats, is bar-shaped—about three times as long as it is thick—and only partially cut. It bears three inscriptions which tell much of its history and has a shallow ...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
Surprisingly, several notable collections of former regal trappings have survived. Certain collections are still very much in use. Others, just as glorious, are not. The Crown Jewels of Imperial Russia, for example, housed in the Armory Museum of the Kremlin in Moscow, are a dazzling, rare, and valuable array of ...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
As things now stand, royal crowns exceed by large numbers the current supply of reigning monarchs vintage engagement rings. Lord Twining in his book he show how to design your own wedding ring, A History of the Crown Jewels of Europe, supplies information about more than 600 crowns, 187 scepters, ...
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