Three new Russian tiaras

The appearance of this image on Pinterest around 20/08/2012 sparked off a spate of detective work involving me and fellow Pinterest users Marion Van Der Fluit, Frederica Capocchi and Edie Engel.

The pin appeared on my ‘feed’ labelled as tiaras belonging to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. That’s suspicious for a start, because the Russian crown jewels were extensively catalogued after the Revolution, and these three tiaras are completely new to me. Of course, the romance of the Romanovs is that pretty much anything sparkly with a Russian origin is attributed to them (and is assumed to have been made by Faberge) because that’s all that most people think of when they think “Russia”. Any Romanov attribution to a previously unknown object had to be treated with a grain of salt!

Edie made the first link to a Russian blog where the tiaras were attributed to S. P Durnovo and listed as (top to bottom):

     a diamond and turquoise tiara in kokoshnik shape

     a diamond and opal tiara

     a naturalistic diamond tiara

So the search was on.

Marion and I found this same reference at about the same instant, I think, trading the link. It crossed in the aether!

S P Durnovo is likely to be Sofia (or Sophia) Petrovna Durnovo, who is pictured in attendance at the Romanov Anniversary Ball in 1903 and is said to have been born Sophia Petrovna Volkonsky (or Wolkonsky). The Wolkonskys were a princely family :

 

Sophia

As was usual when attending formal Russian court functions, she is wearing traditional boyer dress and wearing a kokoshnik.

Now the hunt was on to find out more about her.

Edie’s link to a site tracing the extensive genealogy of the Wolkonsky family yielded the information that she was the daughter of Pjotr Wolkonsky and his wife, Countess Olga Kleinmichel  and she had married twice: " 2d) Pjotr (St.Petersburg 24 Jan 1845-Yalta 2 Jan 1920); m. St.Petersburg 3 Apr 1866 Css Olga Petrovna Kleinmichel (St.Petersburg 17 Sep 1845-Tschudovo 23 Jul 1919) 1e) Sophia (St.Petersburg 28 Jan 1867-Starnberg 11 Apr 1943); m.1st Moscow 11 Nov 1885 Danis Davydov (d. St.Petersburg 5 Aug 1896); m.2nd Cannes 26 Mar 1901 Pawel Durnovo (d.Athens 21 Jan 1909)"

A little disentanglement of the family tree gives us:

There is confirmatory information about them on another genealogy site found by Frederica, which allows us to trace her mother’s family a little and gives us a few portraits, and confirms that she had a daughter, Alexandra, by Pavel (or Pawel) Durnovo.

  

Olga, Sophia’s mother (1845 – 1920).

Marion’s contact in Russia yielded this snipped in relation to Sophia’s first marriage:

Widow of Guard Lieutenant Davydov, Sofia Petrovna, Dark Princess Volkonskaia. After her husband's death, she gave the Marine Corps his yacht "Pavlik." Also on 16 December 1909 she established an annual award in his memory to the amount of 500 roubles for members of the Marine Corps.
(Source unknown, but I just love that description of her as Dark Princess. Lovely!)

Sophia’s second husband Pavel Durnovo is from an interesting family in his own right. He was the son of Pjotr Nickoleyovich Durnovo (1845 – 1915) one of the last Tsar’s ministers and famous for the memorandum in which he outlined the case for aligning with Germany, not Britain, in the war he saw was coming. His argument was that war between Germany and Russia would lead to the end of both empires. A very intelligent and far seeing man, if noted for being a reactionary.

Pjotr Nicoleyovich Durnovo

Pjotr Nicoleyovich was also the last Russian Imperial Minister of Interior whose death was by natural causes. His six successors were assassinated or murdered during the “Red Terror”.

Pavel’s brother, Pjotr, was the first husband of Marianna, Countess Hohenfelsen, nee Marianna Erikovna von Pistohikors. She was the daughter of Princess Paley by her first marriage. Princess Paley became the morganatic wife of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and owned a magnificent Cartier aquamarine parure. Marianna married twice subsequently and had a minor acting career in Hollywood.

The tiaras themselves

The image appears in AE Felkerzam’s "Jewelry (from) the time of Alexander I” a scholarly article/book. Google Translate offers this about the tiaras:

“…we see the tiara on top of turquoise and diamonds, Russian type, reminiscent of the kokoshnik form. The second tiara of diamonds with very large charming opals, is typical of the times, "Restoration", and the third consisting of diamond flowers and leaves, too, refers to the 20 th year (my query -20 th century?). It is close to a headdress, composed of tiaras and crest of wild flowers and ears…”

The author doesn’t appear to attribute them to Sophia, so the quest for confirmation goes on...  Any information will be gratefully received!