If you love gems, there were several benefits to marrying Emperor Napoleon. Marie-Louis-Diadem, part of the current Smithsonian Collection, was a wedding gift from Napoleon I to his second wife Empress Marie-Louise in 1810. Diadem was originally a necklace, comb, belt buckle, earrings, A set of silver and gold sets of all emeralds and diamonds. They were all made by the French jeweler Etienne Nitot et Fils of Paris.
The original diadem had 22 large emeralds and 57 small emeralds, and had 1002 brilliant cuts and 66 rose cut diamonds. The central emerald weighs 12 carats. After the fall of the emperor, Marie-Louis fled to Vienna and included her diadem and other works made as part of a set of necklaces, earrings, combs etc.
Empress Marie-Louise left a crown with her Habsburg aunt, Grand Duke Elise. Sweden's Grand Duke Karl-Stephan-Hapsburg, a descendant of Grand Duke, sold the set to Van Cleef & Arpels in 1953. During the month 1954 and June 1956, the emeralds were individually removed and sold in gem works as emeralds from "Historic Napoleon * Tiara."
From 1956 to 1962, Van Cleef & Arpels installed turquoise cabochons in Diadem. In 1962, necklaces, earrings and combs were displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, about the Empress Marie-Louise. In 1971, Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir to post grain fortune, bought a crown for the Smithsonian Institution. The 1,006 mine cut diamonds have Persian turquoise stones 540 weighing a total of 700 carats and 79 carats. In some respects, it is a pity that the original work was dismantled to sell the emeralds. However, reset diadem in the turquoise cabochon is made even more unique, using similarly beautiful and less valuable turquoise.
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