I walk in the Brookhaven College parking lot and spy a little girl’s lost tiara or crown. I don’t see anyone around, so not sure how the tiara happens to be in the parking lot. It was close to a parking space, so maybe it got shoved out of the car in the tumult of trying to load children. However it happened, there is probably one very sad little girl. There is nothing better than pretending to be a beautiful princess that everyone loves. The Walt Disney Co. is a master of creating the fantasy. As an older adult woman who doesn’t care what people think any more, I have participated in wearing a tiara with a group of women to a restaurant or bar just because we can. It is a liberating feeling to know that people are staring at you for your odd behavior, and you don’t really care. I will be the first to admit that there is safety in numbers though. Brides, debutantes and beauty queens wear tiaras signifying very special moments in their lives. Simply putting on that sparkly headgear elevates women and girls to a new level of extraordinary. Let’s find out what all the fuss is about.
According to Wikipedia, a tiara is a jeweled, ornamental crown traditionally worn by women. It is worn during formal occasions, particularly if the dress code is white tie — a black tail coat worn over a white shirt, white piqué waistcoat and the epononymous white bow tie worn around a standing wing collar.
History of tiaras
Today, the word "tiara" is often used interchangeably with the word "diadem," and tiara is often translated to a word similar to diadem in other languages. Both words come from head ornaments worn by ancient men and women to denote high status. As Geoffrey Munn notes, "The word 'tiara' is actually Persian in origin — the name first denoted the high-peaked head-dresses of Persian kings, which were encircled by 'diadems,' bands of purple and white decoration. Now, it is used to describe almost every form of decorative head ornament." Ancient Greeks and Romans used gold to make wreath-shaped head ornaments, while the Scythians’ resembled a stiff halo that would serve as the inspiration for later Russian kokoshniks. The use of tiaras and diadems declined along with the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity.
Late 18th century to present history of tiaras
In the late 18th century, neoclassicism gave rise to a revival of tiaras, but this time it was a solely female adornment. Jewelers taking inspiration from Ancient Greece and Rome created new wreaths made from precious gemstones. Napoleon and his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais are credited with popularizing tiaras along with the new empire style. Napoleon wanted the French court to be the grandest in Europe and had given his wife many parures — sets of various items of matching jewelry — which included tiaras.
Queen Elizabeth II is said to have the largest and most valuable collection of tiaras in the world, many of which are heirlooms of the British royal family. She is often seen wearing them on state occasions. The Queen inherited many of them, especially from Queen Alexandra. Queen Mary purchased the Grand Duchess Vladimir tiara in the 1920s. It consists of numerous interlocking diamond circles. Pearl drops can be attached inside the circles or emeralds. Queen Mary had a tiara made for the Delhi Durbar held in 1911 in India. It is now on loan for wearing by the Duchess of Cornwall, wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. Queen Elizabeth II commissioned a ruby-and-diamond tiara. A gift of aquamarines she received as a present from the people of Brazil were added to diamonds to make a new tiara.
Other queens, empresses, and princesses regularly wear tiaras at formal evening occasions. The Swedish Royal Family have a collection as do the Danish, Dutch and Spanish monarchies. Many of the Danish royal jewels originally came into the collection when Princess Louise of Sweden married the future King Frederick VIII of Denmark. The Romanov dynasty had a collection up until the revolution of 1917. The Iranian royal family also had a large collection of tiaras. Since the Iranian Revolution, they are housed at the National Jewelry Museum in Tehran.
Although usually associated with women of reigning and noble families, tiaras have been worn by commoners as well, especially rich American socialites like Barbara Hutton. Tiaras are generally a semi-circular or circular band, usually of precious metal, decorated with jewels and are worn as a form of adornment. (On rare occasions, usually when the actual tiara is exceptionally old and valuable due to its history, gemstones and previous ownership, realistic copies may be made and worn in place of the original due to insurance considerations.) Tiaras are worn by women around their head or on the forehead as a circlet on very formal or high social occasions. Tiaras are frequently used to "crown" the winners of beauty pageants.
During the Victorian Age in the United States, tiaras were being seen on non-royal ladies of means.
“In Paris great aigrette balls were organized by aristocrate families who were proud of their name and their past, such as Dutcesse de Gramount with her ‘Crinoline Ball’ and Princess Jacques de Broglie with her ‘Gemstone Ball’ of 1914. In distant New York, Philadelphia and Newport on the other hand, Mrs. William Astor, Mrs. George J. Gould, Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt and Eva (Mrs. Edward) Stotesbury entertained with a degree of magnificence which made European balls appear almost insignificant. The moneyed classes of the United States, who had originally raised themselves above their bourgeois origins through their own hard work, set out to rival the historical aristocracy of Europe. In friendly competition with her rivals, the well-to-do American women refused to forgo any of the attributes sanctioned by society. These accessories included country houses imported from Europe complete with ancestral portraits and furnishings, as well as tiaras order from Cartier’s in Paris and later New York.” – Cartier By Hans Nadelhoffer
By the 1920s, the tiara and similar tiara headbands became popular in the United States. They were worn not only with formal ballroom gowns but became popular with the flappers and their parties.
"The 1920s was a period when milliners used their imagination to embrace aspects of dress from nations far and wide. Inspiration was sought from Egypt, China, Japan and Russia. Headdresses including turbans, toques, kokoshniks and tiaras were all reinvented by designers."
Tiaras are often worn by actresses in film, plays, and television. In 2013, Cartier created a replica of the ruby-and-diamond tiara they had originally made in 1956 for Princess Grace of Monaco for the film “Grace of Monaco,” starring Nicole Kidman.
A crown is a traditional form of head adornment or hat worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used — particularly in Commonwealth countries — as an abstract name for the monarchy itself, as distinct from the individual who inhabits it. A specific type of crown — or coronet for lower ranks of peerage — is employed in heraldry under strict rules. Indeed, some monarchies never had a physical crown, just a heraldic representation, as in the constitutional kingdom of Belgium, where no coronation ever took place; the royal installation is done by a solemn oath in parliament, wearing a military uniform: the king is not acknowledged as by divine right, but assumes the only hereditary public office in the service of the law; so he, in turn, will swear in all members of "his" federal government.
Variations
The papal tiara — worn by the popes to symbolize their authority within the Catholic Church — was last used in 1963.
Costume headgear imitating a monarch's crown is also called a crown hat. Such costume crowns may be worn by actors portraying a monarch, people at costume parties or ritual "monarchs" such as the king of a Carnival krewe or the person who found the trinket in a king cake.
The nuptial crown — sometimes called a coronal — worn by a bride and sometimes the bridegroom is found in many European cultures since ancient times. In the present day, it is most common in Eastern Orthodox cultures. The Eastern Orthodox marriage service has a section called the crowning, wherein the bride and groom are crowned as "king" and "queen" of their future household. In Greek weddings, the crowns are diadems usually made of white flowers, synthetic or real, often adorned with silver or mother of pearl. They are placed on the heads of the newlyweds and are held together by a ribbon of white silk. They are then kept by the couple as a reminder of their special day. In Slavic weddings, the crowns are usually made of ornate metal, designed to resemble an imperial crown and are held above the newlyweds' heads by their best men. A parish usually owns one set to use for all the couples that are married there since these are much more expensive than Greek-style crowns. This was common in Catholic countries in the past.
Crowns are also often used as symbols of religious status or veneration, by divinities — or their representation such as a statue — or by their representatives, e.g. the Black Crown of the Karmapa Lama, sometimes used a model for wider use by devotees. Legend tells that in a previous eon, in a former life as an accomplished yogi, the Karmapa attained the eighth level or bhumi of the bodhisattvas. At this time, 100,000 dakinis or femald buddhas manifested their hair as a crown and offered it to the Karmapa as a symbol of his accomplishment.
A crown of thorns, according to the New Testament, was placed on the head of Jesus before his crucifixion and has become a common symbol of martyrdom.
According to Roman Catholic tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary was crowned as Queen of Heaven after her assumption into heaven. She is often depicted wearing a crown, and statues of her in churches and shrines are ceremonially crowned during May.
The Crown of Immortality is also common in historical symbolism. It is a literary and religious metaphor traditionally represented in art first as a laurel wreath and later as a symbolic circle of stars, often a crown, tiara, halo or aureola. The Crown appears in a number of Baroque iconographic and allegoric works of art to indicate the wearer's immortality.
The heraldic symbol of Three Crowns, referring to the three evangelical magi or wise men, traditionally called kings, is believed thus to have become the symbol of the Swedish kingdom, but it also fits the historical Kalmar Union (1397–1520) between the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
The emblem is often used as a symbol of official State authority by the monarchy, the Riksdag, the government of Sweden and by Swedish embassies around the world, but also appears in other less formal contexts, such as the Sweden men’s national ice hockey team, who wear the symbol on their sweater and hence are called "Three Crowns," and atop the Stockholm City Hall (built 1911–1923). The Three Crowns are also used as the roundel on military aircraft of the Swedish Air Force and as a sign on Swedish military equipment in general, and also on the uniforms and vehicles of the Swedish Policy Authority.
In India, crowns are known as makuṭa — Sanskrit for "crest" — and have been used in India since ancient times and are described adorning Hindu gods or kings. The makuṭa style was then copied by the Indianized kingdoms that were influenced by the Hindu-Buddhist concept of kingship in Southeast Asia, such as in Java and Bali in Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand.
Dancers of certain traditional Thai dances often wear crowns or mongkut on their heads. These are inspired by the crowns worn by deities and kings.
In pre-Hispanic Philippines crown-like diadems or putong were worn by elite individuals and deities, among an array of golden ornaments.
History of crowns
Crowns have been discovered in pre-historic times from Harayana, India. The precursor to the crown was the browband called the diadem, which had been worn by the Achaemenid Persian emperors. It was adopted by Constantine I and was worn by all subsequent rulers of the later Roman Empire.
Numerous crowns of various forms were used in antiquity, such as the hedjet, deshret, pschent or double crown and khepresh of Pharaonic Egypt. The Pharaohs of Egypt also wore the diadem, which was associated with solar cults, an association which was not completely lost, as it was later revived under the Roman Emperor Augustus. By the time of the Pharaoh Amenophis III (r.1390-1352c) wearing a diadem clearly became a symbol of royalty.
The corona radiata — the "radiant crown" known best on the Statue of Liberty — and perhaps worn by the Helios that was the Colossus o Rhodes, was worn by Roman emperors as part of the cult of Sol Invictus prior to the Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity. It was referred to as "the chaplet studded with sunbeams” by Lucian, about 180 AD.
Perhaps the oldest extant Christian crown in Europe is the Iron Crown of Lombardy, of Roman and Longobard antiquity, used by the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. It was later used to crown modern kings of Napoleonic and Austrian Italy and to represent united Italy after 1860. Today, the crown is kept in the Cathedral of Monza.
In the Christian tradition of European cultures, where ecclesiastical sanction authenticates monarchic power when a new monarch ascends the throne, the crown is placed on the new monarch's head by a religious official in a coronation ceremony. Some — though not all — early Holy Roman emperors traveled to Rome at some point in their careers to be crowned by the pope. Napoleon, according to legend, surprised Pope Pius VII when he reached out and crowned himself, although in reality this order of ceremony had been pre-arranged.
Today, only the British monarchy and Tongan monarchy — with their anointed and crowned monarchs — continue this tradition, although many monarchies retain a crown as a national symbol. The Crown Jewels of France were sold in 1885 on the orders of the Third French Republic, with only a token number — their precious stones replaced by glass — retained for historic reasons and displayed in the Louvre. The Spanish Crown Jewels were destroyed in a major fire in the 18th century while the so-called "Irish Crown Jewels" — actually merely the British Sovereign's insignia of the Most Illustrious Order of St. Patrick — were stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907, just before the investiture of Bernard Edward Barnaby FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown.
The crown of King George XII of Georgia made of gold and decorated with 145 diamonds, 58 rubies, 24 emeralds and 16 amethysts. It took the form of a circlet surmounted by ornaments and eight arches. A globe surmounted by a cross rested on the top of the crown. The globus cruciger, also known as "the orb and cross," is an orb surmounted by a cross. It has been a Christian symbol of authority since the Middle Ages, used on coins, in iconography and with a scepter as royal regalia.
The cross represents Christ's dominion over the orb of the world, literally held in the hand of an earthly ruler. In the iconography of Western art, when Christ himself holds the globe, he is called Salvator Mundi, which is Latin for "Savior of the World." The 16th-century Infant Jesus of Prague statue holds a globus cruciger in this manner.
Special headgear to designate rulers dates back to pre-history and is found in many separate civilizations around the globe. Commonly, rare and precious materials are incorporated into the crown, but that is only essential for the notion of crown jewels. Gold and precious jewels are common in western and oriental crowns. In the Native American civilizations of the Pre-Columbian New World, rare feathers — such as that of the quetzal — often decorated crowns; so too in Polynesia e.g., Hawaii.
Coronation ceremonies are often combined with other rituals, such as enthronement (the throne is as much a symbol of monarchy as the crown) and anointing (again, a religious sanction, the only defining act in the Biblical tradition of Israel).
In other cultures, no crown is used in the equivalent of coronation, but the head may still be otherwise symbolically adorned; for example, with a royal tikka in the Hindu tradition of India.
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