The Duke and The Duchess of Cambridge attend the Diplomatic Reception at Buckingham Palace last night.
The Duchess of Cambridge was wearing Princess Diana‘s ‘Cambridge Lovers Knot’ tiara. The Cambridge Lover’s Knot Tiara was the Queen’s wedding gift to Diana.
Diana, Princess of Wales, Hong Kong – 1989
The “Cambridge Lovers Knot” tiara:
The piece has an elaborate design of stylised flowers decorated with diamonds in silver settings. It was looked after by William’s uncle Earl Spencer until William and Harry both turned 30 when it was inherited by the princes.
The Cambridge Lover’s Knot Tiara was given to the Princess by the Queen as a wedding gift in 1981.
The diamond and pearl-encrusted tiara was made in 1914 by Garrard and has a strong French influence with a neo-classical design of 19 diamond arches, each cradling an oriental pearl drop.
It was designed by the Queen’s grandmother Queen Mary and based on one owned by Mary’s grandmother Princess Augusta who married the first Duke of Cambridge.
The piece was composed of existing jewels Queen Mary had in her collection: the dismantled Some Ladies of England Tiara as well as some pearls from brooches belonging to Mary.
After Mary died in 1953, the tiara passed to her granddaughter Queen Elizabeth, who wore it regularly in the 1950s but phased it out.
Queen Mary had this tiara made to her own design in 1914 using pearls and diamonds that she owned, in a charming tribute to her mother’s family.
While Princess Diana wore the piece regularly, she is said to have found it too heavy and gave her a headache. It was also a loan and not part of her personal property so it’s back in the Queen’s collection.
Other precious tiara’s in the Queen’s collection include the Strathmore Rose Tiara which belonged to the Queen Mother and was a present from her parents in 1923.
Meanwhile The Queen Alexandra’s Russian Kokoshnik Tiara is formed of 61 platinum bars and bejewelled with 488 diamonds. It was a gift to Alexandra on her silver wedding anniversary in 1888 and is based on a Russian-style peasant girl’s head wear which was in fashion at the time.
The Queen herself is most often seen in the Queen Mary’s Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara – it is the piece she is wearing in banknotes and coinage.
It was made by Garrard and has a scrolled and foliage-inspired form with diamonds pave-set in silver and gold. The magnificent piece also included 14 large oriental pearls and could be worn as a necklace or even dismantled and mounted on a smaller frame as a coronet. – Daily Mail
source: Daily Mail
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