The royal present in 1861, from Her Majesty The Queen - A very beautiful tiara of diamonds, composed of a rich wide bandeau surmounted by foliage and tall pinnacles designed and the latter chosen by his Royal Highness the Prince Consort.
We see above the scetch from Prince Albert, which he had drawn for the design of this strawberry leaf diamond tiara. It was the wedding gift from the Queen to her daughter. Made of gold, silver and diamonds from Messrs Garrard.
Grand Duchess Alice, wore the tiara often, o.a. at the wedding of her brother the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863.
As Princess Alice died aged only thirty-five, the tiara was not seen again for about 20 years.
The next to wear it was Grand Duchess Victoria-Melita, first wife of Alice's only (surviving) son Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, she wore it on the coronation of the Tsar.
The GD divorced her and remarried in 1905.
The tiara was then passed on to his second wife. She wore it in a spectacular photograph dated 1908, a few months before the birth of her second son.
In 1937 the jewel escaped destruction when the aeroplane taking GDess Eleonore, her son Georg Donatus, his wife and their children to London, crashed in heavy fog/in Belgium - killing them all.
The tiara survived intact because it was protected by the strong metal travelling case.
The family was to attend the London-wedding of Prince Ludwig to the Hon. Margaret Geddes who, until now, was the last Princess of the House of Hesse to have worn Princess Alice's tiara....
On her gown she wore the large diamond stomacher with the pear shaped diamonds from her earrings, as pendant, the violet velvet train was edged with ermine and the short veil from her grandmother the late Duchess of Kent.
Sources:Morning Post;The TIMES;Liverpool Mercury; „In der neuen Heimat“;Alice Großherzogin von Hessen und bei Rhein(Briefe an ihre Mutter Königin Victoria)Verlag Arnold Bergsträsser, Darmstadt, 1884; Hessian Tapestry;
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