Queen Marie of Romania’s Cartier Diamond Sautoir

Next week marks 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Queen Marie of Romania, who was born on this day in 1875! Queen Victoria’s granddaughter who became the popular Queen of the Balkan Nation, ensuring massive territorial gains after the First World War, Queen Marie had a splendid Jewellery Collection, which included this Cartier Diamond Sautoir!

During the First World War, Queen Marie of Romania had sent all of her jewels to Russia for safekeeping which was later seized by the Bolsheviks and never returned. In 1922, her husband, King Ferdinand, bought the spectacular Cartier Diamond Sautoir from which hung a 478.68-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant. The price of Fr. 1,275,000 was paid in four instalments up to 1924, with a pledge to cancel the sale in the event of ‘serious and unforeseen circumstances’, as she recalled:

Got out with Barbo to go to Cartier where I showed him the prodigious sapphire and diamond chain—one of the most astonishing sapphires in existence. We also discussed with Mr. Cartier the remounting of my pearl diadem which I cannot wear in its current form.”

Queen Marie notably wore the Cartier Diamond Sautoir and the 478-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant with an ornate Byzantine Crown, later wearing the Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik, for her Coronation Ceremony in Alba Iulia in 1922.

“As the central figure, the Queen was dressed in reddish gold with a golden cloak embroidered with sheaves of wheat, ‘the chief wealth of our land’… Over the long straight dress hung an extravagant string of diamonds ending in a gigantic sapphire which the King had bought for her from Cartier as a coronation gift. Her crown took its inspiration from a crown worn by Miss Despina, the wife of a ruler from 16th century Wallachia. Studded with rubies, emeralds, turquoises, and enormous ornamental feldspar stones, the crown weighed four pounds and had huge gold pendants with precious stones that hung over Marie’s ears. The queen carried herself in Byzantine fashion, […] splendidly wearing the immense gold inlaid crown and imposing mantle.”

“The King and Queen stepped onto a dais covered with brightly colored carpets, under a huge tufted canopy supported by six enormous lances. A royal purple mantle was placed on Ferdinand’s shoulders and a golden one on Marie’s. The King gave a short speech, took the iron crown that had been made for Carol I into his hands and crowned himself. The Queen knelt before him. He put the golden crown on her head, bent down to pick her up and ‘embraced her in front of the crowd of over 300,000 peasants’. Cannons fired, bells rang, military bands played the national anthem, and people cheered. 𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒊𝒕 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒂 𝒘𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒔𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝑯𝒊𝒔 𝑴𝒂𝒋𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒔 𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒃𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒄𝒐𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒎𝒆𝒔, said Marie.”

The Cartier Diamond Sautoir and the 478-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant was frequently worn by Queen Marie with her Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik and Cartier Pearl Tiara for several portraits and galas over the next few years, including her iconic portraits.

Queen Marie continued to wear the Cartier Diamond Sautoir with the Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik and her Diamond Fringe Tiara into her widowhood, including for the La Petite Entente Banquet at the Royal Palace of Bucharest in 1936.

After Queen Marie’s death in 1938, the Cartier Diamond Sautoir was the most prominent jewel inherited by her grandson, King Michael of Romania, and notably worn a decade later by his mother, Queen Helen, for the Wedding Ball of her cousin, Prince Phillip of Greece, to Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth in London 1947, just a few weeks before the Romanian Monarchy was abolished and King Michael, with Queen Helen, went into exile.

Just a few months into exile, Princess Anne of Bourbon Parma wore Queen Marie’s Cartier Diamond Sautoir with the Greek Key Tiara when she married King Michael at the Royal Palace of Athens.

At some point in the following years, faced with financial difficulties, King Michael sold the 478-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant to Harry Winston, but in the early 1960s, the Sapphire Pendant was acquired by the Greek Shipping Tycoon Stavros Niarchos, and presented it to Queen Frederica of Greece, who was incidentally the sister-in-law of Queen Helen and an aunt of King Michael. Auctioned in 2003, the Cartier Sapphire Pendant is currently on display in the Cartier Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London for only the next few weeks.

The eventual fate of the Cartier Diamond Sautoir remains a bit of a mystery but it appears to have been broken up. Hans Nadelhoffer, the author of a book on Cartier, once related a story to Ashdean on RJWMB,

about when he asked Queen Anne about the sautoir during a party at her home, that she replied she had no idea about its current whereabouts. Later, when she took him upstairs to look at a piece, he found pieces of the sautoir at the bottom of her jewelry box.”