Firstly to throw in my ideas and thoughts. As GDA was QM's aunt and godmother and she was extremely close to her, so leaving her the entire parure is very likely. GDA was also extremely close to the BRF and as the parure is British by history so she may have decided as well it should return to the mainline.
I think jewellery wise QM hardly ever saw a piece of jewellery and didn't think about a redesign, so any changes to some pieces and not others may have started to throw out the parure feeling.
With your ideas about the Russian Sapphires, it's likely as the huge quantities of jewellery and loose stones that hit the markets and collapsed prices would have made any upgrades, expansions and renovations much cheaper. However I believe that the big sales and flooding of the markets didn't come about until the 1920's. Up until then most Russian Emigre's sold as private sales and for the vast number of emigre's they didn't have anything to sell anyway apart from trinkets. When the Bolsheviks "nationalised" the banks anyone with safety deposit boxes lost access to them overnight. So I guess we can only look at that from the idea from a point of when any alterations get made.
However Princes Mary, QM's daughter got this set of sapphires for her wedding in 1922, and I read somewhere that apart from the necklace the stomacher and tiara were of Russian origin.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsfujita/4197282996/in/photostream
Sorry if I've gone off in too much of a tangent in places.
I have a question about the Cambridge Sapphire Parure. Firstly apologies if I am ignorant of some knowledge that seems blindingly obvious to you. The current thinking seems to me to be (correct me if I am wrong) that Queen Mary inherited the suite from Grand Duchess Augusta of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, who got it from her mother Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge, and that Queen Mary altered it by adding elements from some jewels she had to improve it.
My question is, since we have a portrait of GDA wearing the tiara https://pin.it/vyvsvn62c54fzf and a photograph of GDA wearing it as a necklace with the Cambridge Lovers Knot Tiara https://pin.it/uxfad5hpxkdaux , why do we (maybe just me) believe that QM inherited the Parure and not just the tiara. The only photo of QM that I have seen does not prove that she did not bring the suite together herself https://pin.it/72c4j4ynuaidat . GDA died in 1916, about the same time that Russian jewels flooded the market, since sapphires were very popular in Russia could she not have created the suite to complete the necklace. I am not convinced of my arguement since she gave it away after a fairly short period of ownership.
The tiara and the rest of the suite dont quite physically match each other, which assuming the alterations were fairly minor by QM they should. The clusters on the necklace are different to the tiara and I can see no scroll element which is integral to the tiara.
Tiara
https://pin.it/4vj5s3rbqxcqdr
New Tiara
https://pin.it/kkqbqvpet4x65o
Want to make clear I am prepared for you to argue me down, but whould love to know what you all think.
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