The shared wedding crown of Romanov brides from 1884 and its sale in 1926

The Imperial Wedding Crown of silver, crimson velvet and diamonds: a small piece, 14.5 cm high and 10 cm in diameter, worn as a female crown at the weddings of members of the House of Romanov from 1884 to 1908.

Until 1884, an individual crown made from stones of the Diamond Treasury was produced for each princess who married into the House of Romanov. After the wedding the crown was dismantled, and the stones returned to the repository of the crown diamonds. In time, however, this became ever more inconvenient, and a single, common crown was needed.

"The Imperial Wedding Crown, adorned with 9 solitaires (6 large ones in the cross and 3 small ones on the upper part of the crown) and 80 granitures, with 4 diamonds in each" cost 20,465 roubles. It is believed that diamonds from the belt of Catherine II were used for this crown, but this is a misconception: in fact, the stones came from the 80 appliqués of the diamond suit of Emperor Paul I, while the cross was made from the diamonds of an epaulette.

The crown matched the diamond kokoshnik of Maria Feodorovna, wife of Paul I, together with cherry-shaped earrings, bracelets and a buckle. This entire set is kept in the Diamond Fund. With the exception of the wedding crown: the Bolsheviks sold it for a song in 1926, and for decades it passed from hand to hand until it came to rest in a modest American regional museum, the Hillwood.

In the photographs: the wedding of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, 1908; the marriage of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and Elizabeth Feodorovna, 1884; Elizabeth Mavrikievna, wife of the Russian Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, 1884