The Chrysoprase Tiara

Photos: tiara detail


Picture it: London, 1835. You're a woman of some means who has clambered her way up the social ladder, and now you're appearing at the opera and in ballrooms, surrounded by royal and noble women in the finest jewels. They're all in tiaras, too -- the early nineteenth-century craze for the ornaments has spread from the court of Napoleon to all of the major royal courts of