The Crown of Queen Mary, formally Queen Mary's Crown, is the consort crown made for the 1911 coronation of Queen Mary of Teck (1867-1953), wife of King George V, and one of the principal pieces of the British Crown Jewels held in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. Created by the Crown Jewellers Garrard & Co. in 1911, the crown is an unusually rich object even by the standards of the British regalia, having at various times in its history housed three of the most famous diamonds in the world: the Koh-i-Noor, the Cullinan III, and the Cullinan IV. It is one of the more interpretively complex pieces of the British Crown Jewels, since its meaning has shifted with the political resonance of those stones, and its use in the twenty-first century has become a matter of public discussion.

Construction

Queen Mary's Crown was made in 1911 to a design that broke with the immediate Victorian tradition by adopting eight half-arches rather than the four of earlier consort crowns. The frame is silver lined with gold, and the original 1911 setting was open silver to allow light to penetrate the stones. The crown was set with 2,200 diamonds, mostly cushion-cut, and at the centre of the cross pattée at the front was set the Koh-i-Noor, the famous 105.6-carat oval brilliant diamond that had been recut from its original Indian form after its 1849 cession to the British Crown. The four arches met under a monde and cross, and additional Cullinan diamonds - the Cullinan III (94.4 carats, pear-cut) and the Cullinan IV (63.6 carats, cushion-cut) - were set in the front cross and at other prominent positions.

The Koh-i-Noor

The presence of the Koh-i-Noor in Queen Mary's Crown was already symbolically heavy at the time of the 1911 coronation. The stone had been in the British royal collection only since 1849, when it was ceded by the ten-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh to Queen Victoria following the British annexation of the Punjab, and its meaning was contested by Indian and Pakistani voices throughout the twentieth century. Queen Mary wore the crown at her coronation in 1911 and on relatively few subsequent state occasions; it was used only once at coronation - in 1911 - and was thereafter displayed in the Tower of London or, on occasion, used by Queen Mary as a non-state ornament. The Koh-i-Noor was removed from Queen Mary's Crown in 1937 and transferred to the new Crown of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, made for the coronation of George VI; it has since remained in that crown and was on display at Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's funeral in 2002 and on subsequent occasions of state mourning.

Cullinan III and IV

The Cullinan III and Cullinan IV diamonds, cut in 1908 from the same 3,106-carat rough as the Cullinan I (the Great Star of Africa, in the Sovereign's Sceptre) and the Cullinan II (the Second Star of Africa, in the Imperial State Crown), were set into Queen Mary's Crown at its making in 1911. They were also designed to be removable: the Cullinan III and IV are commonly worn by members of the royal family as a brooch ("Granny's Chips", in the words of Queen Elizabeth II), and they were so worn by Elizabeth II on numerous state occasions during her reign. They were temporarily reset into Queen Mary's Crown when the crown was used at her funeral in 1953, and the brooch arrangement remains the principal mode of their use.

The 2023 reuse

Queen Mary's Crown was selected for use by Queen Camilla at her coronation alongside King Charles III on 6 May 2023, the first reuse of an existing consort crown rather than the commissioning of a new one in over a century. Buckingham Palace announced in February 2023 that the crown would be modestly reset for the occasion, with the Cullinan III, IV, and V diamonds (the latter from Queen Mary's brooch collection) added to the front cross and arches in place of certain other stones. The Koh-i-Noor was specifically not used, a decision widely interpreted as responding to the political sensitivities surrounding the stone's history with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, all of which have at various times asserted claims to it. The 2023 use of Queen Mary's Crown was the first time it had been worn at a coronation since 1911 and made the crown one of the most-photographed pieces of the British regalia in the twenty-first century.

Place in the regalia

Queen Mary's Crown sits within the larger British Crown Jewels collection alongside the Imperial State Crown, the St Edward's Crown (used at the moment of crowning of the sovereign), the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the Imperial Crown of India, and the various smaller diadems, sceptres, orbs, and ceremonial swords. Its particular significance is as a survivor of the Edwardian-era Crown Jewellers' work, as a vehicle for some of the most famous individual diamonds in the collection, and as a piece whose history reflects in microcosm the broader political and ethical questions surrounding the colonial provenance of significant elements of the British regalia.