Queen Marie of Romania’s Cartier Diamond Sautoir

Next week marks 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Queen Marie of Romania, who was born on this day in 1875! Queen Victoria’s granddaughter who became the popular Queen of the Balkan Nation, ensuring massive territorial gains after the First World War, Queen Marie had a splendid Jewellery Collection, which included this Cartier Diamond Sautoir!

During the First World War, Queen Marie of Romania had sent all of her jewels to Russia for safekeeping which was later seized by the Bolsheviks and never returned. In 1922, her husband, King Ferdinand, bought the spectacular Cartier Diamond Sautoir from which hung a 478.68-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant. The price of Fr. 1,275,000 was paid in four instalments up to 1924, with a pledge to cancel the sale in the event of ‘serious and unforeseen circumstances’.

Queen Marie notably wore the Cartier Diamond Sautoir and the 478-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant with an ornate Byzantine Crown, later wearing the Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik, for her Coronation Ceremony in Alba Iulia in 1922.

The Cartier Diamond Sautoir and the 478-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant was frequently worn by Queen Marie with her Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik and Cartier Pearl Tiara for several portraits and galas over the next few years, including her iconic portraits.   

Queen Marie continued to wear the Cartier Diamond Sautoir with  the Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik and her Diamond Fringe Tiara into her widowhood, including for the La Petite Entente Banquet at the Royal Palace of Bucharest in 1936.

After Queen Marie’s death in 1938, the Cartier Diamond Sautoir was the most prominent jewel inherited by her grandson, King Michael of Romania, and notably worn a decade later by his mother, Queen Helen, for the Wedding Ball of her cousin, Prince Phillip of Greece, to Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth in London 1947, just a few weeks before the Romanian Monarchy was abolished and King Michael, with Queen Helen, went into exile.

Just a few months into exile, Princess Anne of Bourbon Parma wore Queen Marie’s Cartier Diamond Sautoir with the Greek Key Tiara when she married King Michael at the Royal Palace of Athens. 

At some point in the following years, faced with financial difficulties, King Michael sold the 478-carat Cartier Sapphire Pendant to Harry Winston, but in the early 1960s, the Sapphire Pendant was acquired by the Greek Shipping Tycoon Stavros Niarchos, and presented it to Queen Frederica of Greece, who was incidentally the sister-in-law of Queen Helen and an aunt of King Michael. Auctioned in 2003, the Cartier Sapphire Pendant is currently on display in the Cartier Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London for only the next few weeks.

The eventual fate of the Cartier Diamond Sautoir remains a bit of a mystery but it appears to have been broken up. Hans Nadelhoffer, the author of a book on Cartier, once related a story to Ashdean on RJWMB,

about when he asked Queen Anne about the sautoir during a party at her home, that she replied she had no idea about its current whereabouts. Later, when she took him upstairs to look at a piece, he found pieces of the sautoir at the bottom of her jewelry box.”

Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik