Welcome to the first Style File Friday of Blogmas 2024! During Blogmas, we will be back to weekly SFF posts (instead of the first Friday of the month). In past years, I’ve looked at red and green fashion history and red and green tiaras. And being honest, the tiaras are by far and away one of my most popular Blogmas posts over the last nine years. So, I am embracing it and giving you more royal jewels! Each Style File Friday, I will bring you different royal jewels and we are starting with brooches. Let’s explore some of my favourite red and green brooches!
Royal Jewels: Red and Green Brooches
Dutch Emerald Butterfly Brooch
The Dutch Royal Family has arguably one of the best jewellery collections. And Maxima can really pull off anything, and pull it off well. This butterfly shaped brooch is set with emeralds and diamonds and dates back nearly a century and a half. King Willem III gave his second wife, Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, this brooch as a wedding gift for their 1879 wedding. Most of the women in the Dutch Royal Family have worn the brooch at some part, but Maxima chooses it frequently!
Queen Margrethe’s Ruby Horseshoe Brooch
This piece is one of the most sentimental in the Danish collections and it makes me happy to see it. King Frederik IX of Denmark gave this small ruby and diamond brooch to his eldest daughter, the-then Princess Margrethe, in 1953 when an act of legislation made her his heir. The stones are the two colours of the Danish flag and the shape a symbol of luck.
Margrethe wore the brooch pinned at the base of her neck at her proclamation ceremony (where the Danish monarch is officially proclaimed) after her father’s passing. She wore it frequently on the anniversary of her proclamation, as well as for other engagements.
The Queen Mother’s Modern Emerald Floral Brooch
This large emerald and diamond brooch was one of the Queen Mum’s favourites. The brooch has a large square emerald at the centre of the flower with diamond petals, as well as a diamond chain with a diamond drop. While the Queen Mum wore this brooch many times, historians are still unsure of who made it and who gave it to Elizabeth. Some suspect it may have been part of the Greville bequest but there has been no confirmation. (Dame Margaret Greville, a society hostess, left a large number of sizable jewels to the Queen Mother on her death, including several tiaras.)
After her passing, the then-Duchess of Cornwall wore the brooch. You can see it at a 2007 engagement above.
Queen Lovisa’s Diamond and Spinel Brooch
Deviating from rubies for our red stones, we have another unique piece from the Danes. This beautiful diamond and spinel brooch uses the red spinel as a pop of colour in the floral design. Notably, the brilliant cut diamonds and red spinel are set in silver rather than gold or platinum.
This small but gorgeous piece originally belonged to Queen Lovisa (known in English as Louise). Lovisa was a Swedish princess who married into the Danish Royal Family, to King Frederik VIII. Queen Margrethe has also worn this piece, but Queen Mary wore it in 2024 for a State Visit to Oslo.
Ladies of India Brooch
This piece is aptly named, as Queen Mary received it as a gift from the Ladies of India. No one actually addresses this, but I am going to make an educated guess and say that it is from the British women in India. It was given to Mary for the 1911 Delhi Durbar where she and her husband, King George V, were crowned as Emperor and Empress of India. (George was the only British monarch to be crowned in India.)
This emerald brooch features a massive emerald with rose and floral designs carved into the stone. It is set in both silver and gold and has a border of diamonds. Queen Mary wore it in her Durbar portrait. Queen Elizabeth II wore it, though not terribly often. And most recently, Queen Camilla debuted the piece at Royal Ascot in 2024.
The Crown Ruby Brooch
This brooch was not originally set with rubies but instead with opals. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert purchased a demi-parure of diamond and opal pieces to go with a tiara he had recently designed. That tiara would be known as the Indian Circlet or Oriental Circlet Tiara. After her death, Queen Alexandra had almost all of the parure reset with rubies. (She felt that opals were bad luck.) Queen Mary then had the brooch reset with rubies in the 1920s.
The Queen Mother wore the ruby set frequently throughout her life, both together and as individual pieces. The brooch is quite notable on its own, with a large oval ruby with a diamond border on top with a pear-shaped ruby drop with a diamond border. Queen Elizabeth II did not wear the brooch herself until 2015.
What are your favourite red and green brooches?
Cheers,
The Historian
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