One of the earliest predictions was by German astronomer and scholar, Theodor Landscheidt, in 2003. Other solar researchers have also predicted an imminent grand solar minimum, but for different reasons. Solar scientists have calculated that the sun’s heat and light output, a quantity known as the total solar irradiance, decreased by 0.22% during the Maunder minimum, which is about four times its normal rise or fall over an 11-year cycle. About a decade later, Hugh Roberts’s book on The Queen’s Diamonds also offered a final, solid Greville provenance for the piece.The Maunder Minimum was unquestionably chilly: alpine glaciers in Europe encroached on farmland the Netherlands’ canals froze every winter and frost fairs on the UK’s frozen Thames River became a common sight.

Greville and later altered by Cartier for the Queen Mother. He wrote that the “openwork diamond tiara” did indeed come from the Greville bequest, adding the accurate information that the piece was constructed by Boucheron for Mrs. In his landmark book, Tiaras: A History of Splendour, Munn clarified some of the details about the Greville Tiara, correcting earlier misinformation. In 1997, the Queen Mother began loaning some of her personal jewels, including the Strathmore Rose Tiara, to exhibitions curated by Geoffrey Munn, beginning a collaborative relationship with the jewelry historian. By the end of her very long life, though, she was more comfortable sharing some information about the tiara’s origins. Menkes called the diadem “the last grand tiara made for the English royal family.”īoth Menkes and Field were incorrect in their understanding of the tiara’s provenance, partly because Elizabeth was so tight-lipped about the Greville bequest pieces in general. Field wrote (incorrectly) that Elizabeth had chosen the tiara’s design herself. Both Suzy Menkes and Leslie Field, writing in the 1980s, argued that Elizabeth had had the entire tiara commissioned herself using a cache of South African diamonds given in 1901 to either King Edward VII or Queen Mary. That meant that earlier jewelry historians often made erroneous claims about the source and creation of the jewel, largely because they had access to incomplete information. Greville were her own private property, and she generally kept their provenance quiet. Greville by Queen Elizabeth.”Īs we discussed earlier, the jewels that Elizabeth inherited from Mrs. Roberts called the resulting tiara, which had a kokoshnik-style silhouette, “one of the most striking and unusual of the jewels inherited from Mrs.

(You can see a picture of that original tiara, which had a palmette design, in Sir Hugh Roberts’s The Queen’s Diamonds.) Hirtz used the diamonds from that original tiara to fashion a new, modern diadem with an eye-catching geometric design.

It was a complete overhaul of another diamond tiara from her collection, which had been made by the same firm 20 years earlier. Greville by Lucien Hirtz of Boucheron in Paris in 1921. Greville’s estate went through probate in 1943, but we know that one of the most majestic pieces inside was a grand diamond tiara with a distinctive honeycomb pattern. We still don’t know exactly how many jewels were in the black tin trunk that was delivered to Buckingham Palace after Mrs. Earlier this week, we discussed the life of Dame Margaret Greville and her surprise decision in 1942 to bequeath her jewels to Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother).

Grand meander 2021