The Halo Tiara was made by Cartier London in 1936. The piece is set with 739 brilliant-cut diamonds and 149 baton diamonds arranged in a graduated scroll pattern. It belongs to a category of early twentieth-century Cartier tiaras that used platinum, closely set stones, and flowing scroll motifs, characteristic of the firm's work in the period between the Garland Style and the full Art Deco turn.
The tiara appeared in the 175 New Bond Street showroom in late 1936, among the bejewelled pieces that Jacques Cartier had hoped would be purchased for Edward VIII's expected coronation. On 18 November 1936, the Duke of York (Prince Albert) bought it as a gift for his wife, Elizabeth. Barely three weeks later, Edward VIII announced his abdication and Prince Albert became George VI; the tiara that had been bought for a duchess ended up belonging to a Queen.
The 1947 wedding
Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) gave the tiara to her daughter Princess Elizabeth as an eighteenth birthday present in 1944. When Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip in November 1947, she wore the tiara as part of her wedding attire. The morning of the wedding brought an unexpected complication: the tiara snapped when being fitted. It was rushed to Cartier London for emergency repair, returned in time, and worn as planned. The incident has since become one of the more noted pieces of royal wedding lore. Princess Margaret also wore the tiara on subsequent occasions.
A second wedding It remained in the Queen's collection and came back into wide public view in 2011 when Catherine Middleton wore it at her wedding to Prince William, introducing it to a vastly wider audience than it had previously reached. The sight of it at Westminster Abbey prompted considerable interest in its history and in the Cartier London workshop that had made it seventy-five years earlier.
Workshop and attribution
The construction of the tiara was carried out by the English Art Works workshop on the upper floors of 175 New Bond Street, the firm's London manufacturing base. As with the major Cartier London pieces of the 1920s and 1930s, the craftsmen and setters of English Art Works were responsible for its production. The piece is part of the broader history of Cartier London's work for the British royal family and aristocracy across that period.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 8 (“Diamonds and Depression: The 1930s”) and ch. 10 (“Cousins in Austerity, 1945–1956”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), p. 62.
