Queen Azizah’s Cartier Tiara on display in Melbourne

Almost two years ago, I made the discovery connecting Queen Azizah’s Diamond Bandeau to Queen Mary’s ‘lost’ Diamond Lozenge Bandeau and I am now excited to reveal that Queen Azizah’s Cartier Tiara is now on display in the new Cartier Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, which opens tomorrow and runs until October!

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A Diamond Bandeau composed of Diamond ‘Lozenges’ set within Diamond and Pearl motifs between a Diamond and Seed Pearl base and top row, the tiara bears maker’s marks for Cartier and dates from around 1909.

Queen Mary may have acquired this Diamond Lozenge Bandeau shortly before the First World War, but seems to have been most notably worn topped with Pearls taken from either her Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara or the Lover’s Knot Tiara for the Royal Film Premiere of ‘The Ghost Goes West’ at Leicester Square Theatre in London in 1935.

Queen Mary also wore the Diamond Lozenge Bandeau topped with Pearls for a Gala Performance of the Comedie Française at the Savoy Hotel in London in 1939, before wearing it to watch Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Princess at the Sadler’s Wells Theater the following month.

Queen Mary was last pictured wearing the Diamond Lozenge Bandeau for the London Premiere of the Gainsborough film “Magic Bowl” at the Odeon in Marble Arch in 1946.

In 1948, a freshly 18-year old Princess Margaret wore Queen Mary’s Diamond Lozenge Bandeau as her first Tiara for a Gala ‘Sports Fantasy’ showcase at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam following the Inauguration of Queen Juliana of The Netherlands.

When she was eighteen Princess Margaret borrowed a tiara from her grandmother Queen Mary. This diamond bandeau had lozenge-shaped motifs and was originally surmounted by thirteen large oval oriental pearls set on spikes. By 1946, however, Queen Mary had removed the pearls. In September 1948 the eighteen-year-old Princess wore it when on one of her first official engagements she represented King George VI at the Inauguration of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands in Amsterdam, the Dutch equivalent of a coronation.

Queen Mary’s Diamond Lozenge Bandeau was also worn by Princess Margaret during the Dutch State Visit to Britain in 1950 and during the Danish State Visit to Britain in 1951, and seems to have been an 18th Birthday Gift from Queen Mary.

Princess Margaret wore Queen Mary’s Diamond Lozenge Bandeau on a few rare occasions into the 1960s, though it does not seem to have been publicly seen after that, leading many to assume it remained in the British Royal Vaults.

However, it would make sense that Princess Margaret would have discreetly sold the Diamond Lozenge Bandeau around the same time as Queen Mary’s Amethyst Tiara was sold in the late 70s or early 1980s, without any public notice.

It is known that Princess Margaret, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s, privately and occasionally publicly divested herself of several pieces of jewellery, including an Amethyst Parure, also inherited from Queen Mary, which was famously later worn by Anna Wintour. This historical precedent provided a credible mechanism through which the Diamond Lozenge Bandeau Tiara could have entered the private market, eventually making its way into new hands without public records. The possibility of such a private transaction lent significant weight to the hypothesis that Queen Azizah’s tiara was indeed the same piece that had once belonged to Queen Mary.

This Tiara was acquired for the then Crown Princess Azizah in New York around 1988 by her friend, Princess Chulabhorn of Thailand, and it was a shipped to Malaysia in a cardboard box without any documented provenance.

Over subsequent decades, the Diamond Bandeau Tiara became a cherished piece within Queen Azizah’s collection, worn for numerous ceremonies, and notably, for her Official Portrait as the Tengku Puan (Crown Princess) of Pahang.

The Diamond Bandeau was also loaned to several family members, including her two daughters, Princess Afzan and Princess Jihan, with Princess Afzan even famously wearing it for a school fancy dress competition. Crucially, throughout this period, Queen Azizah remained entirely unaware of the tiara’s potential British royal provenance and, until our analysis, even its prestigious Cartier maker.

In October 2024, I was invited to the wedding of Prince Muhammad of Pahang, Tengku Arif Bendahara, son of the Sultan of Pahang and Her Majesty Queen Azizah. On the second day of festivities, the bride, Tengku Natasya Puteri Tengku Adnan, wore the Diamond Lozenge Bandeau enhanced with four additional brooches for the Istiadat Berinai Ceremony at the Istana Abdul Aziz. Having stumbled upon photos of both tiaras side-by-side a few months earlier, I decided to approach Queen Azizah to inquire about the history of tiara in her possession and to ascertain if she was aware of the striking resemblance to the piece once worn by Queen Mary and Princess Margaret.

Upon sharing historical photographs of the tiara worn by Queen Mary and Princess Margaret, Queen Azizah’s initial response was one of intrigued surprise. It wasn’t until she had the opportunity for a more thorough examination of the comparative images the following day that her conviction solidified.

An excited message from Her Majesty, confirming a strong visual match, swiftly led to an invitation to the Palace. En route, Queen Azizah shared close-up images of her tiara, enabling a more detailed preliminary analysis. It was during this review of the high-resolution images that a critical piece of evidence emerged: faint maker’s marks for Cartier were discernible. This was a revelation, as I had been unaware of Cartier’s involvement in the creation of either the British royal piece or Queen Azizah’s tiara

Over the past two years since I initially published the article, I have been researching the Tiara around the globe to get confirmation of several aspects of my initial hypothesis, with the gracious permission of Her Majesty who has allowed our team to access the Tiara several times and arrange for it’s display in Melbourne. Most extraordinary was a private tour of the Cartier Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, at the end of which Queen Azizah put on the Tiara to the delight of all of us present.

With the extraordinary help of Helen Molesworth, Senior Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, we have been able to confirm that the Diamond Bandeau was created by Cartier in 1909, so our initial visual analysis has proven to be correct.

The tiara occupies a unique transitional space between the ornate, garland-heavy styles of the late nineteenth century and the nascent geometric motifs of Art Deco. The use of seed pearls as a framing device was a hallmark of Cartier’s during the first decade of the twentieth century and a significant stylistic parallel can be found in the iconic Cartier India Tiara, currently in the possession of the Duchess of Gloucester, which utilizes similar rows of seed pearls to define its architectural boundaries, as well as Princess Marie Bonaparte’s Cartier Pearl and Diamond Bandeau, which is displayed in the same case in Melbourne.

However, despite our best efforts, which included a visit to Buckingham Palace, in a multi-faceted approach encompassing visual analysis, archival research, and direct testimony, we have been unable to get definitive confirmation that this particular Tiara is the same one worn by Queen Mary and Princess Margaret, so while it is likely, we are technically unable to link Queen Azizah’s Tiara to the British one just now, though we are confident that we will soon be able to get categorical, irrefutable documentary proof required for a definitive identification.

A deliberate emphasis has been placed on presenting the evidence as indicative of two identical pieces, meticulously avoiding a definitive pronouncement that the tiara in Queen Azizah’s possession was unequivocally the same piece worn by Queen Mary and Princess Margaret. This recognizes that while the visual and circumstantial evidence is compelling, significant gaps in the research still exist. This distinction is crucial for maintaining academic integrity and acknowledging the inherent limitations of historical inquiry when records are incomplete or inaccessible.

Now the culmination of all this research and two years of hard work is that Queen Azizah’s Cartier Diamond Bandeau is on display in the new Cartier Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

I am also delighted to reveal that I will be beginning a Masters at the University of Cambridge later this year, with my research centred around my discovery of the Cartier Tiara in Queen Azizah’s collection as part of a thesis on the adoption and evolution of Tiaras in Malaysia, which will hopefully uncover more of the mysteries connected to this Tiara. I have been in Malaysia this past week as part of my research ahead of coming to Melbourne for the opening of Cartier, where I am currently publishing this article.

I would like to thank Her Majesty Queen Azizah for not only allowing me unprecedented access into her collection but also allowing our team to research and exhibit the Tiara. I would also like to thank and appreciate our Associate Editor Sam Gillespie and Anna from Her Majesty’s team for all their efforts into making an initial comment about putting the Tiara on display into a reality. We couldn’t have gotten here without you!

Media enquiries should be directed to royalwatcher@hotmail.com. Please credit Saad Salman and The Royal Watcher when writing about this news. Images may not be reproduced without our explicit consent.

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