Queen Marie of Romania (29 October 1875 – 18 July 1938), born Princess Marie of Edinburgh, was the granddaughter of both Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander II of Russia. She had rejected a proposal from the future King George V of England to marry the future King Ferdinand of Romania in 1893. Her adoption of Romania as her country became total: during the First World War and at the Paris Peace Conference, she negotiated vigorously on Romania's behalf, securing an enlarged territory despite the country having been looted and weakened by the conflict.
The Bolsheviks' seizure of power in Russia meant that many of her jewels, which had connections to the Russian imperial family, were lost in the upheaval. To compensate her, King Ferdinand proposed to help replenish her collection, and the couple became active clients of Cartier.
The Sapphire Sautoir
The most significant piece in the Cartier relationship was an enormous 478-carat sapphire. Louis Cartier had first displayed this stone within a sautoir necklace at the 1919 San Sebastián exhibition, where it attracted considerable interest but remained unsold. In 1921, King Ferdinand bought it, by then remounted as a pendant on a diamond and platinum necklace, for 1.38 million francs. He gave it to Queen Marie as a coronation gift. She wore it often, particularly as it complemented the Cartier sapphire kokoshnik tiara she had acquired separately, a piece previously owned by Grand Duchess Vladimir. Among the other pieces the couple bought from Cartier was an exquisite diamond tiara with pear-shaped pearls suspended from arches.
The 1926 American Tour
In 1926, Queen Marie undertook a diplomatic tour of the United States, travelling to "see the country, meet the people and put Romania on the map." She was welcomed with considerable fanfare in New York and then travelled by her special train, the Royal Roumanian, across America and Canada for more than seven weeks, covering around 8,750 miles and reportedly seen by an estimated six million people.
Pierre Cartier seized the opportunity, and the Queen visited the Fifth Avenue showroom. Pierre, characteristically, found a way to memorialise the occasion. The full story of the visit is told in The Cartiers, ch. 5.
She remained a figure of considerable glamour and celebrity in the years that followed, one of the first royals to engage openly with modern media and publish books and articles about her own experiences.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 5 ("Moicartier New York: Mid-1920s")
- Terence Elsberry, Marie of Romania (St. Martin's Press, 1972), cited in The Cartiers
- Wikipedia: Marie of Romania
