Coronet Belonging To Queen Victoria May Find New Home Outside UK

A historically significant diamond and sapphire coronet belonging to Queen Victoria has had a temporary export ban placed on it by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to prevent it from being sold to an overseas buyer who purchased the coronet for £5million.

The Culture Minister, Matt Hancock, described the piece as “one of the most iconic jewels from a pivotal period in our history”. The export ban was recommended by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest due to the “close connection with our history…and its outstanding significance for the study of the young Queen Victoria.”

The coronet, which features eleven sapphires set in gold and diamonds set in silver, was designed by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria to match the brooch he gave her the day before their wedding. It showcases the deep devotion the monarch had to her husband, who died in 1861, as it was one of the few tiaras she wore after his death when she was in perpetual mourning.

Export ban placed on Queen Victoria's sapphire & diamond wedding coronet https://t.co/bPNhxtGBMA pic.twitter.com/B8sLoSmW9z

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) August 28, 2016

It left the main line of the royal family in 1922, when King George V and Queen Mary gifted it to their only daughter, Princess Mary, when she married. Her descendants, the Lascelles family, sold it decades later to a dealer in London, who has now sold it to an overseas buyer.

It’s fate now rests on a British buyer – either private or an institution – coming to its rescue to remain in the UK. The decision on the export application will be made around late December, with an extension to the end of June 2017 possible if an alternative buyer is found.

Queen Victoria wearing the diamond and sapphire coronet in a portrait by Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1842

Filed under Historical Royals, The United Kingdom
Tagged Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria's Sapphire Coronet, Tiaras.

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