The Faberge Empress Josephine (or Leuchtenberg) Tiara

Tiaras aren't everyone's cup of tea, I know, but I adore them. They're frivolous and cruelly expensive bits of frippery, and yes, I know that in today's earnest, take-issues-seriously world,  I should be concerning myself with gay rights or ending hunger and oppression--and believe me, most days I do just that--but just once in a while I want to be frivolous too.  They are amongst the loveliest of adornments which, when they catch the light, scintillate shamelessly (in Geoffrey Munn's immortal phrase). They're just beautiful.

This isn't my favourite tiara (that's the Hunt and Roskill diamond oakleaf and acorn tiara in the British Museum) but I certainly wouldn't object if Mr Butler took it into his head to acquire several millions of pounds so he could drop it into my lap. Imagine my delight when I discovered the tiara, along with dozens of other Fabergé items, is on permanent display at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences.  Is it any wonder that I was so keen to go to Galacticon3 to do that writing workshop?!

There are not many Fabergé tiaras in existence. This one, only 5.2" wide, is known as the Empress Josephine tiara or sometimes the Leuchtenberg tiara,  but as it was made by Fabergé’s workmaster August Holmström in 1890 and the Empress died in 1814, it was certainly never hers. 

However, some of the diamonds were. The briolette-cut (i.e. drop-shaped) diamonds in the tiara were a gift from Emperor Alexander I of Russia to Josephine when he visited La Malmaison following her divorce from Napoleon, perhaps as a part-payment for an important collection of old master paintings which the Emperor acquired from her and is still in the Hermitage today.

The Leuchtenberg title was given to Eugène de Beauhamais, the son of the Empress Josephine and the adopted stepson of Napoleon, when Eugène married Princess Augusta of Bavaria. Their youngest son married the eldest daughter of Emperor Nicholas I, which explains why diamonds given by an Emperor of Russia to the Empress Josephine, ended up in the tiara of a Russian princess.

The Leuchtenberg family sold the tiara during WWI, and it was bought by the Belgium royal family. When Queen Elisabeth of Belgium died in 1965, her son Prince Charles Theodore (1903-83) inherited it. The tiara then passed to his sister, Queen Maria José (1906-2001) the last Queen of Italy. Princess Maria Gabriella, her daughter, inherited the tiara in 2001 and put it up for auction in 2007.

The tiara was bought by the McFerrin family, who have collected Fabergé items for years and have put their collection on permanent loan to the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. It's an extraordinary collection of items with everything from famous Fabergé eggs to parasol handles to the tiara. The generosity of the McFerrin's is laudable. One of the curators at the museum told me that the family had so much Fabergé, that they'd turn up for meetings at the museum while discussing the loan, pull some priceless item from their pocket where it had been jostling around with their handkerchief and wallet, and say "Oh, here.  Have this one as well."

I wish they'd thought of me when they were doing that.  Tch.

So there you are.  The potted history of a glorious work of art. If ever you go to Houston, don't miss it.

Hunt and Roskell Oak Leaf Tiara

 
This tiara, created by Hunt and Roskell circa 1855 is my all-time favourite.  A design of oak leaves and acorns in diamonds set in open-backed silver and gold, its three elements (two side pieces, one central oak leaf spray) can be dismounted from the frame and worn as a devant de corsage or the side elements can be worn on a pair of tortoiseshell combs.


Detail of a side piece:

The original case still exists, labelled Hunt & Roskell, New Bond Street.  The case is stamped with a Viscount's coronet and the initials 'MP'- likely Mary Selina Charlotte Portman, daughter of Viscount Milton, who married 2nd Viscount Portman June, 1855.

The case holds 2 tortoise-shell combs and the gold frames for the tiara and brooch, as well as the three jewelled elements themselves. The jewelled elements are interchangeable between the combs, the brooch-frame and tiara.

All three elements combined to make the devant-de-corsage:

And the two side pieces mounted onto the combs:

Dimensions
Width: 4.8 centimetres (central spray)
Width: 9.3 centimetres (outer sprays; comb-mounts)
Diameter: 16.3 centimetres (circlet)

In 1970, the tiara was auctioned by Sotheby's, and bought by an extraordinary jewellery collector, Ann Hull-Grundy (1926 -1984).  The following is adapted from the Fitwilliam Museum's site:

Born into a Jewish banking and industrial family in Nuremberg in 1926, Anne Hull Grundy, née Ullmann, left Germany for England when Hitler rose to power in 1933. Her father re-established the family’s manufacture of metal lithographed pressed toys in Northampton and by 1939 Mettoy was a successful company. Following the war years, when the company produced jerry cans and machine gun parts, Mettoy introduced the hugely successful Corgi range of die-cast zinc toys. It was these Corgi toys, together with income from the Keyser-Ullman bank, which later provided Hull Grundy with the wealth which enabled her to form one of the finest jewellery collections in the world.

Inspired by her parents, Hull Grundy started collecting when she was eleven. Disabled by a respiratory condition at the age of twenty-one, which first tied her to a wheelchair and ultimately to her bed, she dedicated her life to the study and collecting of European jewellery and Japanese ivories. Buying many of her treasures by post, she assembled thousands of the most exquisite pieces of jewellery, but only ever wore a wedding band(her husband was the artist and entomologist John Hull Grundy (1907-1984).

Reflecting on her collecting activities later in life, Hull Grundy described herself as 'a large spider sitting at the centre of a web of dealers, salesrooms and museums'.  Her ambition was to outwit art dealers and museum curators and to acquire a ‘ticket to life eternal’, in other words set herself and her husband some collection monuments.

Thanks to Hull Grundy, Britain’s museums are much richer in jewellery today. Not necessarily diamonds, which she thought were ‘for call girls and dumb rich wives’, but carefully chosen pieces of antique and modern jewellery. The recipients of biscuit tins filled with precious surprises, no less than 70 collections benefited from her knowledge and generosity over the years. The British Museum was given some of the most important pieces from her collection in 1978, including this tiara. 

The tiara is on permanent display at the British Museum.