Gladys Vanderbilt’s Cartier Diamond Tiara

Today marks the 140th Anniversary of the Birth of Gladys Vanderbilt, Countess Széchenyi, who was born on this day in 1886, 140 years ago! The Vanderbilt Heiress who married a Hungarian Count and later inherited The Breakers in Newport, Countess Széchényi possesed this magnificent Cartier Diamond Tiara!

Gladys Moore Vanderbilt grew up in the largest private house ever built in New York City, the Vanderbilt II family mansion on Fifth Avenue, and The Breakers in in Newport, Rhode Island, before she married Count László Széchenyi de Sárvár-Felsővidék in 1908. The couple, who had five daughters, maintained a Palace in Budapest until 1945, while the Count was the Hungarian Ambassador to the United States and also the Ambassador to the United Kingdom before his passing in 1938. Countess Széchenyi had inherited The Breakers which was leased to the Preservation Society of Newport County after 1948, but she held an apartment until her death in 1965. Her fourth daughter, Countess Sylvia Szapáry, maintained a residence there until her passing in 1998.

When Gladys Vanderbilt married Count László Széchényi in 1908, she received this magnificent Cartier Diamond Tiara as a wedding gift from her mother, Alice Vanderbilt, which was designed as eight lily sprays and adorned with interchangeable pear-shaped amethysts and similarly shaped diamonds.

In 1912, several of the Countess’ jewels, to the value of $200,000, were stolen from the Palace in Budapest before being discovered in a motor car garage in the city, where they had been hidden, wrapped in a piece of newspaper behind a barrel. It is not known if the Tiara was among those stolen jewels.

Countess Széchenyi wore the magnificent Cartier Tiara set with diamonds and a massive 62-carat Diamond Pendant to the Coronation of Emperor Charles I of Austria as King of Hungary in 1916.

At some point by the 1960s, Countess Széchenyi’s Cartier Tiara had been dismantled and the individual Brooches distributed among her five daughters, with the youngest daughter, Countess Ferdinandine von und zu Eltz, being pictured wearing her Brooch on numerous occasions.

Last year, another Diamond Brooch from the Cartier Diamond Tiara, which had been inherited by the third daughter, Countess Gladys Széchényi, Countess of Winchilsea, came up for Auction at Phillips in Geneva among a series of jewels and objects belonging to Gladys Vanderbilt, Countess Széchenyi.

Given by Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt to her daughter, Gladys Vanderbilt, on the occasion of her marriage to Count László Széchényi in 1908,

Then to Countess Gladys Széchényi (1913-1978), who married Christopher Finch Hatton, 15th Earl of Winchilsea and 10th Earl of Nottingham (1911-1950),

Thence by descent to the present owners.

The Brooch surpassed estimates of CHF80,000–120,000 and eventually sold for CHF 451,500. Its current owner is not known.

A Cartier Diamond Brooch, designed as a lily spray, set with a pear-shaped diamond weighing 4.55 carats, embellished with circular- and rose-cut diamonds, unsigned, French maker’s mark, with a mechanism allowing the diamond to be detached and worn at the centre of a three-strand cultured pearl necklace.

Among the most outstanding examples is the Cartier Diamond Brooch, originally part of a diamond tiara from the Belle Epoque, designed as eight lily sprays and adorned with interchangeable pear-shaped amethysts and similarly shaped diamonds. Commissioned by Alice Vanderbilt, née Gwynne, for her daughter Gladys Vanderbilt upon her marriage to Count László Széchényi in 1908, the tiara was eventually dismantled, and the present brooch set with an old-cut pear-shaped diamond weighing 4.55 carats stands as a surviving symbol of social power, familial ambition, and transatlantic prestige. Gladys, the youngest daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, represented the last generation of Gilded Age heiresses whose marriages bridged American wealth and European nobility.