Fabergé Cyclamen Tiara (Westminster Collection Theme Week)

The gold-and-diamond Fabergé Cyclamen Tiara. Well, I guess Saturaday and Fabergé rhyme for a reason as day six of Westminster Tiara Collection Theme Week nears its end. (Fabregé night’s alright, alright…Fabregé night’s alright, alright, alright! Go on try to get that tune out of your head now! I dare you! Come Monday you’ll be cursing me and Sir Elton John!) When you consider the different examples we’ve had to look at, I think we’ve seen a nice buffet of what the tiara world has to offer. Spot-on collecting, your Grace. Spot on!

Fabergé made such delicate, diamond-encrusted tiaras the fact the Westminster collection boasts two of these obra maestras of jewel architecture is, well, bucking the odds a bit. Fabergé jewellery is rare, a tiara rarer still, an Art Nouveau tiara like the Cyclamen, is slightly more probable than finding a triceratops in the backyard.

(The closest thing I ever came to owning four, not to mention one, of anything Fabergé was a box of four swizzle sticks that cost $90 at Bloomingdales. Yes, each one was topped with an exquisite mini-Fabergé egg. I felt like I was looking at fancy diet Easter candy.)

the Fabregé Cyclamen tiara as a necklace

This tiara, made in 1903, uses diamonds to create delicate cyclamen flowers tied with a ribbon and, like the Princess Mary Fringe, can also be worn as a fringe necklace. One look at the height to which such dainty stems tower, one understands why the Fabergé atelier is held to the standard that it is. This gold-and-diamond tiara was crafted by none other than the famous Fabregé workmaster himself: Finnish-born Albert Holmström. It was purchased from Fabergé by the Hon. Mrs. Wilson Fox. (For whom there is no apparent information, nor a title.) Yes, you have to drink the tiara in for it’s beauty, it’s got little back-story.

Now in the family jewel collection of the Duke and the Duchess of Westminster

Her Grace Constance Edwina Cornwallis West, the Duchess of Westminster (first wife of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, remember Bendor?) is “supposedly” seen in this gravity defying tiara in the photo below. Entre nous, I’ve squinted and stared but if she is indeed wearing the tiara it evaporated into her coiffure like smoke. Frankly, I cannot figure out what the tie-in between Countess Counstance in 18th century fancy dress and the Fabergé tiara would have if she hadn’t been wearing it. I guess it’s a question for the fine people who put together the site http:http://www.royal-magazin.de/.

Constance, Duchess of Westminster at the Bal Poudré at Warwick Castle

Constance, Duchess of Westminster, photographed at at a costume ball, the Bal Poudré at Warwick Castle in 1895.

Frances Evelyn Greville, better known as Daisy the Countess of Warwick, became famous for staging such glamorous occasions. Bal poudre literally ”powdered ball” was an evening at Warwick Castle in which a lavish ball at Versailles in the late 18th century was recreated. Everyone arrived in period attire, right down to powdered wigs, towering poufs and rogue.

I don’t think the entire luxurious event could ever compare to a Fabergé tiara…but that’s just me! Hope you’re having a lovely weekend everybody!

Thank you, again, for being my readers! It’s means a bunch to me! ❤