Jewelry of Queen Alexandra of Britain the former Princess of Wales

Greetings,

I hope you enjoyed my first article on Queen Alexandra, a fascinating woman who dazzled the world with her wit, beauty, charm and the ability to look the other way. She continues to inspire women to this day. Although, I will be continuing the series about Alex and her stolen jewels, I thought I would take a slight detour and talk just a bit about a some events that happened in Alexandra’s life.

The first is during the summer of 1901, which was during the mourning for Queen Victoria. The new Queen wanted to make her mark and she commission Pierre Cartier to create several new pieces of jewelry for the new Queen. When Alexandra first came to England she had no real jewelry to call her own. Some of the personal gifts that her husband, the Prince of Wales received during his tour of India was eventually given to Alex. She also, took several old pieces of jewelry that was originally made for men and had them broken up and re-commissioned in new pieces for her to wear. One of her favorite pieces was a necklace made up of 71 pearls, 12 cabochon rubies, and 94 cabochon emeralds. This was the start of a very successful relationship for the House of Cartier.

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London was all about the various events that were important on the social calender. On the right is a pictue of Alex at Howes for the yahting season. She felt the right clothes and jewels were essential in her role as Queen.

Another other important event on the royal social calendar is Christmas. I found an article on the Internet circa 19 Dec 1903 which talks about how she exclusively does her Christmas shopping from Buckingham Palace. The Queen is not like normal women where she takes a Hansom cab or a coach to look at all of the beautiful window displays and visiting the various shops with all of their tempting treats. No because of her royalty she must do her shopping from the relative privacy and comfort of Buckingham Palace. Shopkeepers send to the Palace a selection of their most expensive items and the Queen chooses what items she wants. The Queen does not allow trades people to take advantage of her. For example, if a tradesman had an item in his shop window for one price and wanted to sell it to her for an inflated price it would definitely not be safe for that tradesman to try. At Christmas time, the Queen does buy a lot of jewelry like pendants, bangles, pins and brooches. Some of the items she buys are very costly. This year, she will buy buttons ornamented with diamonds. And all of the rage is Tourmaline which appears in several pieces she has purchased. These days she has remarked that she takes her pleasure in selecting gifts for her grandchildren.

To take a step back in time is always such a thrill for me and I hope for you dear readers as well. In my next and I swear final post will be about Alex and those stolen jewels. Hope you enjoyed this little article..

Till next time,

Chris