Royal jewels: Romancing the stone
Editor’s note: The MAP Academy has put together a wonderful collection of essays on fabled pieces of royal jewellery—and the stories of theft, conquest, and war that accompany them. In part one, we looked at the Koh-i-noor, Star of India and an exquisite pair of earrings from Andhra Pradesh. Part two brings you the Patiala ruby choker, the Patiala necklace of yellow diamonds and the iconic Toussaint necklace, made famous by ‘Ocean’s 8’.
This article originally appeared on the MAP Academy website. All images that appear with the MAP Academy articles are sourced from various collections around the world, and due image credits can be found on the original article on the MAP Academy website. The MAP Academy is a non-profit online educational platform committed to building equitable resources for the study of art histories from South Asia.
And it was all yellow: The Patiala necklace
Containing a total of 2,930 diamonds with the De Beers yellow diamond as its centrepiece, the Patiala Necklace was made in 1928 by the Cartier jewellery house in Paris under commission by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (r. 1900–1938).
The ruler of the princely state, known for his extravagant tastes and penchant for jewellery, enlisted designer Louis Cartier to create a ceremonial necklace out of his heirloom jewels. Maharaja Bhupinder Singh is photographed below:
Considered among the most expensive and elaborate jewellery ever made, it is estimated to have cost around $30 million in present currency value. The necklace’s disappearance around 1948 and the subsequent reappearance of its parts have been subjects of speculation and intrigue. The necklace in its current form is Cartier’s reconstruction over the original base with the missing elements painstakingly substituted.
The yellow diamond was discovered in De Beers’s South African mine in 1888, weighing over 400 carats in the raw. At approximately 230 carats after it was cushion-cut, it was the seventh largest polished diamond in the world. The then Maharaja of Patiala bought it after it was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889.
Later, it was among the large number of precious stones that Maharaja Bhupinder Singh sent to Cartier in Paris c. 1926, with instructions to create a necklace worthy of his position. Combining South Asian influences with European designs, the necklace comprised five platinum chains in addition to a choker or neck collar. These were entirely encrusted with small diamonds, with seven larger diamonds — each between 18 and 73 carats — as well as some emeralds and Burmese rubies, surrounding the central pendant, which held the De Beers diamond. With a final weight of nearly 1000 carats, the necklace took about three years to complete, and was exhibited in Paris before it was delivered to the Maharaja.
Bhupinder Singh wore it on several occasions before his death in 1938, after which his son Yadavindra Singh inherited it. The necklace remained in Patiala’s royal treasury until 1948, after which it was discovered to be missing. Thought to have been dismantled and smuggled out of the country after the accession of Patiala to the newly independent union of India, its whereabouts remained unknown for over three decades.
In 1982, the De Beers diamond appeared at a Sotheby’s auction at Geneva, Switzerland, but its location thereafter remains undisclosed. In 1998, a jewellery expert associated with Cartier discovered the platinum skeleton of the necklace in an antiques shop in London, with all of the larger stones missing. Having acquired this, Cartier London refurbished the necklace using cubic zirconia and synthetic diamonds to replace the missing gems.
The restored necklace is a part of the Cartier archives. It was displayed as part of the ‘Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts’ exhibition at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco in 2011–2012. In 2022, the diamond choker made a public appearance when American celebrity Emma Chamberlain wore it at the Met Gala held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. On loan from Cartier, the choker attracted heavy publicity and scrutiny, raising questions about the painful history of stolen heritage reaching the West. Such criticism notwithstanding, the movement and provenance of the Patiala Necklace once it left the royal treasury remains unclear.
Go crimson: The Patiala ruby choker
Commissioned by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (r. 1900–1938), the ruby, pearl and diamond choker made by the Paris jewellery house Cartier in 1931 is popularly known as the Patiala Ruby Choker. The Art Deco-inspired choker is one of several ornaments that the French designers created for the ruler of the princely state using his heirloom gems—another prominent example being the Patiala Necklace containing the De Beers yellow diamond. Like the diamond necklace, the choker too disappeared for many decades before its reappearance and eventual restoration by Cartier in Geneva in 2012.
Between 1925 and 1930 Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, known for his extravagant tastes, enlisted the house of Cartier to set a large number of gems from his treasury into jewellery that reflected a European design aesthetic. During the Art Deco period, Cartier and other Parisian luxury design houses evolved a dual aesthetic to cater to their clientele, offering a European design sensibility to Indian royalty, and injecting an Indian flavour into certain designs for Western customers.
Completed in 1931, the ruby choker represented such a mix of South Asian elements with a European style. Bhupinder Singh gifted it to one of his wives, Maharani Sri Bakhtawar Kaur Sahiba, who is seen wearing it with other Cartier necklaces in some photographs.
The choker contains 292 crimson ruby beads, altogether weighing 356.6 carats. These are strung in six rows in the central section and five rows in two sections on either side, punctuated by four clusters of natural pearls. Of the 132 pearls, a few are also arranged on either end of the choker, adjacent to the clasps, which are studded with six cabochon rubies each. The central section is bookended by six rubies in a floral arrangement and sixty diamonds set in platinum, on either side.
It is unclear when the ruby choker was smuggled away or taken from Patiala’s royal treasury, and its whereabouts remained unknown until it re-emerged in the art market of Switzerland in the year 2000. It had been shortened into a bracelet, with a length of rubies removed.
Cartier acquired and restored it to its original form in 2012, before selling it to the ruling Al Thani family of Qatar. As part of the Al Thani collection the choker has travelled widely to be displayed in museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and The Palace Museum in Beijing. In 2019, the choker was auctioned for 975,000 USD at Christie’s in New York as part of the Maharajas & Mughal Magnificence sale.
Cinematic centrepiece: The Toussaint necklace
An opulent piece of jewellery featuring the substantial Queen of Holland diamond as its centrepiece, the Toussaint necklace was commissioned in 1931 by Ranjitsinhji Jadeja (r. 1907–33), the ruler of the former princely state of Nawanagar (present-day Jamnagar, Gujarat in India).
The necklace was designed by the luxury jewellery house Cartier and named after its influential director Jeanne Touissant, who absorbed influences from Mughal and other royal Indian jewellery in her work, and is also known for her involvement in the Art Deco movement. Following its dismantling in 1960, the necklace no longer exists in its original form.
The two chains of the Touissant necklace consisted of large clear white diamonds, with square pink ones acting as links. At its centre, there were three pink diamonds, along with a 26-carat blue and a 12-carat green diamond. Its central pendant stone was the bluish Queen of Holland, then weighing 136.25 carats and considered one of the largest diamonds in the world.
Information on the diamond’s origins is entirely speculative. Its appearance in Amsterdam, Netherlands, recorded in 1904, would indicate South African origin given the large number of diamonds making their way into the country from South Africa at the time. Yet its bluish tint, characteristic of Golconda diamonds, has led experts to suggest that it originated in the Deccan region of India.
Named after the then ruler of the Netherlands, Queen Wilhemina (r. 1890–1948), the diamond was cushion-cut in the early twentieth century by Dutch firm F. Friedman & Co., who owned it at the time. Ranjitsinhji, a jewel connoisseur as well as renowned cricketer, bought it from the firm in 1930, and took it to Cartier in 1931 to have it set as the centrepiece of what would become the Touissant necklace.
The necklace was completed in 1933, the year of Ranjitsinhji’s death. It went on to make several public appearances around the neck of his nephew and successor Digvijaysinhji Jadeja (r. 1933–66). The Touissant necklace remained with the family until it was dismantled in 1960, when Cartier bought the Queen of Holland as a standalone. After it was sold to William Goldberg in 1978, the diamond was further cut down to 135.92 carats. At the time of the writing, the diamond is owned by Robert Mouawad, former president of the Mouawad house.
The Toussaint necklace entered popular consciousness again following the release of the American film ‘Ocean’s 8’ in 2018. The comedy heist film featured a smaller imitation that was recreated by Cartier using zirconium oxide crystals in place of the original diamonds.
The MAP of Knowledge
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