Beatrice Mills Forbes (10 October 1883 – 21 November 1972), Countess of Granard, was the daughter of Ogden Mills, an American financier, and married Bernard Forbes, the 8th Earl of Granard, in 1909 at the age of twenty-six. She became one of the most prominent American-born peeresses of her era, and one of Cartier London's most steadfast clients across three decades.
Her relationship with Cartier began well before she commissioned the pieces the house would later note as among its more remarkable remounting projects. At the 1911 coronation tiara exhibition organised by Jacques Cartier at 175 New Bond Street, among the nineteen tiaras lent by society guests for display was one belonging to Lady Granard. When she made her debut in Parliament following her wedding, her jewels attracted comment: contemporary press accounts described her as wearing more splendid gems than any other woman in the chamber save the Queen herself, who wore the Cullinan diamonds for the first time on that occasion.
By the 1920s and 1930s she was a familiar figure at Cartier London, her two acknowledged passions being horse racing and jewellery. The house knew her well for commissions that included significant kokoshniki (the large Russian-style tiaras that Cartier London made for its most important clients in the Edwardian and interwar periods). In 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression, she commissioned a necklace that incorporated more than two thousand diamonds and a rectangular emerald weighing 143.13 carats, all her own stones being remounted rather than new purchases. Remounting had become a practical response to the economic climate: clients with existing fine gem collections could refresh their jewellery without the outlay of acquiring new stones.
By 1937, the year of the coronation of King George VI, she continued to be among the clients for Cartier London's coronation tiaras. The political and social diarist Chips Channon noted, in a remark preserved in his diaries of the period, that she "could scarcely walk for jewels" when she appeared at the celebrations.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 7 ("Never Copy, Only Create: The 1920s"), ch. 8 ("Diamonds and Depression: The 1930s"), and ch. 9 ("A New King and a New War: 1936–1944")
- Wikipedia: Beatrice Mills
