The Duchess of Teck's Crescent Tiara

Queen Elizabeth II is a possessor of many valuable tiaras, some of them are frequently worn by Her Majesty during state occasions, others are lent to the female members of the British Royal Family. Princess Eugenie, for example, was allowed to wear the rarely seen Greville Emerald Kokoshnik tiara on her wedding in 2018, while the Duchess of Sussex donned Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau when she married Prince Harry earlier that same year. Senior female members of the family are allowed to keep tiaras, which they borrowed from the royal vault. This, of course, is possible by virtue of the queen’s approval. You could see the Duchess of Cambridge wear the Lover’s Knot tiara on important state gatherings. The Duchess of Cornwall, meanwhile,  was allowed to keep the Greville and the Delhi Durbar Tiara. There’s also another lesser known piece under her care -  the Teck Crescent Tiara.

The tiara’s history could be traced back to Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Queen Victoria’s first cousin and mother of the future Queen Mary. When her aunt, Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester, died in  1855, the princess inherited a portion of her jewelry, which she combined into this rose and crescent tiara. Hugh Roberts believed that the Duchess of Gloucester willed, among others, "the diamond bandeau for the head and three diamond roses". These jewels are likely the forerunner of the crescent tiara. First arranged as a headband, the crescent, floral and foliate elements were finally set as a tiara in 1882. It exists today as a row of twenty diamond crescents hugging three diamond-set roses, with a slim band of diamonds at its base. The crescents on the tiara can actually be worn facing either backwards or forwards, and there are photos of its wearers sporting it both ways. The princess, who married Francis, Duke of Teck in 1866, frequently wore this tiara and she was actually photographed many times with this piece on her head. 

When she died in 1897, the tiara was inherited by her eldest son, Prince Adolphus, who succeeded his father as Duke of Teck in 1900. In 1917, the second Duke of Teck was one of the German princes of the British Royal Family to relinquish his foreign titles in exchange for a British peerage. King George V created his brother-in-law Marquess of Cambridge. His wife, Margaret, Marchioness of Cambridge, had a new frame made for the piece and she would frequently wear it when the occasion called for it. It is unclear when and how it ended up in the hands of her sister-in-law Queen Mary but by the 1930s, the tiara was already a part of the queen’s stupendous tiara collection. 

Queen Mary was, however, never seen wearing this tiara in public. She passed it on to her daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mother), who only wore the tiara once, at a banquet in Canada in 1939. The tiara has since been kept in the royal vaults and was last seen in public during an exhibition of tiaras at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2001. After the Queen Mother’s death, Queen Elizabeth II inherited the Teck Crescent Tiara, together with her other precious jewels. It was one of the three tiaras loaned to the Duchess of Cornwall after she married Prince Charles.