Queen Victoria's Jubilee Diamonds

Official Portrait, Queen Victoria, 1893, Diamond Jubilee. Public Domain. Photo purposefully not registered for copyright.   In the official portrait for her Diamond Jubilee, Queen Victoria sits regally in a black silk dress fashioned with panels of grey satin and black net accented by silver embroidery. The skirt of the dress is nearly completely shrouded in beautiful lace, either white or gray. She wears a delicate crown with alternating cross pattee and fleur-di-lis, in similar fashion to the George IV diadem. The entire crown is paved in diamonds and features larger diamonds that appear to float around the perimeter of the band. Rising from the cross pattee, diamond-paved arches meet in the middle beneath a diamond-paved monde with a central cross pattee sitting in state atop the monde. It appears in her portrait that the arches and central cross pattee were removed (or they had not yet been placed), as she wears the simple circlet upon her head. In addition to the dainty crown, Victoria wears a stunning diamond necklace with matching diamond earrings. The Queen had this necklace made in replication of Queen Charlotte’s necklace, ordered to be returned to the Hanoverian family in 1858. She had twenty-eight diamonds removed from a sword hilt and a couple of Garter badges. Each of the diamonds was set in a collet, a coronet-shaped claw that holds an individual stone. The pendant stone on this striking replica is the famous Lahore Diamond, which served double duty as the central pendant on the Timur Ruby Necklace. Her earrings were made in the fashion of the day, with a large brilliant cut diamond against the ear and a smaller brilliant just below it. The two large pear-shaped drop diamonds were also “borrowed” from the Timur Ruby necklace. These beautiful diamonds were originally set as side stones in the Koh-i-Nur armband. by Angela Magnotti Andrews  

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