The Nancy Astor Tiara was adapted by Cartier London in 1930 and sold at Bonhams New Bond Street on 5 June 2025 (London Jewels, lot 101, sale 30671). It was the piece's first public sale since Cartier London originally sold it to Viscount Astor in December 1930, making the 2025 appearance its first market outing in nearly a century.
Nancy Astor
Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor (1879–1964), was born Nancy Witcher Langhorne in Virginia and came to Britain as part of the wave of American women who married into the English aristocracy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1906 she married Waldorf Astor, who became the 2nd Viscount Astor, and she made Cliveden, the family's estate in Buckinghamshire, one of the most prominent political and social gathering points in Britain between the wars. When her husband succeeded to the viscountcy and moved to the House of Lords in 1919, Nancy Astor stood for his former parliamentary seat and won, becoming the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons.
Her position as a political hostess of the first rank, and her access to wealth sufficient to support that role, placed her in the category of Cartier London clients who commissioned jewellery that would be seen at the most significant formal occasions in Britain. A tiara was a statement piece within that world: worn at grand dinners, balls, and state events, it declared the wearer's standing in a way that brooches and necklaces did not.
The Piece
The tiara as it reached Bonhams in 2025 had a two-stage history. Its base is a platinum bandeau dating to around 1915, set with crescent, bow, and quatrefoil motifs in pierced platinum with old brilliant, single, and rose-cut diamonds totalling approximately 14 carats. In November 1930, the English Art Works workshop at 175 New Bond Street transformed the existing bandeau by adding three fluted turquoise plumes rising from a central old brilliant-cut diamond of approximately 3.00 carats, carved turquoise leaves, and fan-shaped turquoise panels at each end. The piece is numbered 1314 and the original Cartier fitted case survived to the 2025 sale.
The turquoise and diamond combination places the piece within a strand of 1930s Cartier London work that drew on coloured stones as a structural element rather than simply as a contrast accent. Bonhams described the design as drawing on Egyptian, Indian and Persian motifs, a vocabulary Cartier had explored extensively across the early twentieth century. The carved turquoise plumes and leaves carry that vocabulary into the tiara form, and the warmth of the material sits differently from the cool diamond-and-platinum aesthetic of the garland period that preceded it.
The piece is discussed in Judy Rudoe's Cartier 1900–1939 (1997), p. 172, and in Geoffrey Munn's Tiaras: A History of Splendour (2001), pp. 109, figs. 81–82.
Documented Use
Nancy Astor wore the tiara to the London premiere of City Lights at the Dominion Theatre in 1931. In the early 1930s she loaned it to her sister for a court presentation at Buckingham Palace. According to the Bonhams catalogue, her brother-in-law was sufficiently taken with the piece to commission a similar tiara from Cartier in 1935, described as now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The specific piece in question has not been independently identified here.
The 2025 Bonhams Sale
The provenance as catalogued ran unbroken from the original sale to Viscount Astor in December 1930, passing by descent to the seller. For pieces of this date and attribution, the combination of documentary completeness and named-client biography is uncommon: the family descent and the published literature all converge on the same object. The strong auction result reflects how the market weighs that combination. The construction, stones, and maker's marks were available for examination during the sale period, and the catalogue documentation adds to what can be traced through other sources on Cartier London's interwar output.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 4 (“Jacques, 1906–1919”) and ch. 8 (“Diamonds and Depression: The 1930s”)
- Judy Rudoe, Cartier 1900–1939 (British Museum Press, 1997), p. 172
- Geoffrey C. Munn, Tiaras: A History of Splendour (Antique Collectors' Club, 2001), pp. 109, figs. 81–82
