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Princess Olga of Yugoslavia - emeralds
Posted by Kongetro on February 12, 2019, 8:14 pm
Since we had a post touching on the festivities following the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937 I started to check out a few newspaper articles (the ones that are a freely available online that is). Thus I came across an article in a New Zealand newspaper regarding the first State Ball at Buckingham Palace. Sadly there were not a lot of detailed descriptions of the jewels worn (as usual). But the one thing that was specifically mentioned was an emerald tiara and necklace worn by Princess Olga of Yugoslavia. They were described as probably the finest jewels worn at the ball. Now, I knew that the Princess had some fine and rather large emerald earrings. But I was not aware of any emerald tiara. Has anybody come across this before? Could it be that she had borrowed Queen Marie of Yugoslavia's Emerald Kokoshnik tiara?
The link to the article in case you want to check it out:
A fascinating account of the Court evening, Kongetro! Thank you so much for posting it.
The idea of emeralds being worn by Princess Olga is new to me, but one which will get me looking for information.
I have a busy day tomorrow but, if I have any energy in the evening, (tomorrow will be a very hot day in my part of Australia* 39-40C is predicted!) I will look in the British newspapers to see what they reported.
On a side note -- I always delight in the fact that New Zealand followed Australia's lead and made their newspaper archive available to the entire world. Singapore has followed that concept and made their media available to all. How I wish other countries would follow! Knowledge is a precious commodity which should be freely available to all.
Many of the UK papers carried the same report as the New Zealand paper. The Daily Telegraph, as indicated in the NZ paper, had the same item.
For those who don't want to read the small print, the report is almost identical to the one in the link Kongetro gave above.
So far I have not found reports from other occasions during the coronation festivities in 1937 where Princess Olga was reported to have worn emeralds.
I doubt if any photos of Princess Olga dressed for this court ball will be found in the press, as she, along with others, stayed at Buckingham Palace during the coronation period.
For the coronation ball at the Albert Hall in May 1937, Princess Olga wore her large diamond tiara.
I wonder if it is possible that, for the court ball at Buckingham Palace on 14 May 1937, Princess Olga borrowed the Greek emeralds? But would that account for the report of the necklace?
The other possibility is that the report has a mistake and that Crown Princess Martha's emeralds were the subject of the comment.
Thank you Beth for searching the British newspapers for more information on this event. I did also think of the Greek Emerald tiara, but like you said; what then about the emerald necklace? It could also be that they were mistaken for the Norwegian Emeralds, of course. Newspaper articles cannot be 100% trusted - sadly - be it modern ones or those from the past. But somehow I don't think the Norwegian Emeralds would be described as "the finest" among what must have been a gathering of such outstanding pieces. Kongetro
on February 12, 2019, 8:14 pm
