Tea at Trianon: The Vladimir Tiara

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, October 10, 2021

The Vladimir Tiara

From The Court Jeweller:

The tiara’s original owner was one of the most important figures of the Romanov imperial court at the turn of the twentieth century. Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a German princess, became part of the Romanov family when she married Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, a son of Emperor Alexander II, in 1874. Marie also had Romanov heritage of her own: she was the great-granddaughter of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna of Russia. To honor her Russian great-grandmother, Marie adopted the name “Maria Pavlovna” after her wedding in St. Petersburg. Her family called her “Miechen.” To the larger world, she became known as “Grand Duchess Vladimir."
Around the time of her marriage, the Russian imperial court jeweler, Bolin, made an elaborate new diamond and pearl tiara for Maria Pavlovna. The piece was delightfully flexible; the pearls could be removed, as well as part of the diamond-encrusted structure, allowing it to be worn in a more closed form. (The tiara is generally described as “widowed” when worn without its pendant stones.) For one costume ball, she wore the tiara without its pendants as a smaller closed coronet, as you’ll note in the portrait above. (Read more.)