In 1926, Sir Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala, traveled to Paris to visit the workshop of couture jeweler Louis Cartier. Along with his retinue of servants and wives, he brought a trunk filled with diamonds and precious gemstones, both loose jewels and those already set into pieces of magnificent ornamentation.
In 1900, at the age of 9, Bhupinder Singh had not only inherited his royal title following his father’s death, he had also gained possession of the family’s crown jewels. A quarter-century later, he decided it was time to give his ancestral bling a little update. He wanted his precious treasures reset in the style currently en vogue in Paris.
Cartier was not the only Parisian jeweler to receive the Maharaja of Patiala’s business. But that particular visit resulted in the single biggest and most expensive commission Cartier, or any other premier jeweler, had received to date. Among the pieces that the famed Parisian jeweler created for their honored client, pieces that when finished filled “casket after casket,” according to Cartier, was one that continues to be spoken about with awe: the Patiala Necklace.
ADVERTISEMENT
The royal ornament in question, created in 1928, was a glittering wonder. An Art Deco, bib-style piece, the Patiala Necklace was comprised of five strands of gems set in a platinum chain. It contained nearly 1,000 carats of diamonds, with 2,930 diamonds set throughout, including five large white diamonds, one 18-carat tobacco-hued diamond, and, as the pièce de résistance, the 234.69-carat pale yellow De Beers diamond hung as a pendant from the chandelier of gems. (An additional pop of color was added courtesy of two large Burmese rubies.)
By all accounts, the luxury-loving, cricket-obsessed maharaja cherished his new statement piece. But, around 1948, the Patiala Necklace disappeared while in the possession of his son, who assumed the title and position after Bhupinder Singh’s death in 1938.
For decades, speculation swirled about the grand bib’s fate until, in 1998, a Cartier representative discovered its platinum chain in a jewelry resale shop in London. Cartier set about reassembling one of the greatest necklaces to have come out of their atelier, but the reproduction is not quite what it once was: cubic zirconium replicas now sit where many of its most magnificent stones, including the De Beers diamond, once sparkled.
For centuries, India was not only the site of many of history’s great gemstone discoveries, it was also where many of the great jewelry wearers lived. In Europe, blinged-out noblewomen were the walking evidence of their family’s wealth; in India, that position was held by the most prominent men.
The maharajas followed in the footsteps of the ancient rulers of India, for whom “owning gem-encrusted jewelry and weaponry was a symbol of power and prosperity,” and adopted lavish lifestyles of their own. As Sarah Jordan writes for Sothebys, “Exceptional displays of jewels and splendour were the hallmarks of a Maharaja, from lashings of diamonds to fine clothes, dressed horses and courtly attendants.”
The maharajas of Patiala embraced this style. During the British colonial rule of India, Patiala was one of the most important districts in the country. In the late 19th century, Maharaja Rajinder Singh helped bring his state and family to prominence. In addition to being “the first reigning Prince to blend the elements of the English gentleman and the Indian potentate,” according to his obituary in The New York Times, Rajinder Singh was also responsible for bringing the De Beers diamond into the family.
But it was under the rule of his son, Bhupinder Singh, that both the princely domain of Patiala and its glittering crown jewel reached their greatest heights.
In the early 1900s, the House of Cartier was well aware of the potential profit to be made from the wealthy maharajas of India. These rulers had both the money and the historical tradition of investing in their family gems to lead the biggest jewelers of the day to see dollar signs.
In 1911, Jacques Cartier, one of the three brothers in charge of his family’s jewelry empire, visited India for the first time to hobnob with the Indian princes, including Bhupinder Singh. Just over a decade later, this networking would pay off in a big way.
The Maharaja of Patiala was known for his lavish and flamboyant lifestyle. As Stash Luczkiw writes in Cartier Art, “Everything about him attested to his uncontainable exuberance and curiosity. The maharajah's gargantuan appetite and reputation for excess in all areas of life—food, women, travel, sports, politics and, most of all, jewels—were the stuff of legend.’’
In one notorious 1927 episode, recounted later by Alain Boucheron, the maharajah showed up at the Boucheron jewelry atelier “accompanied by a retinue of 40 servants all wearing pink turbans, his 20 favorite dancing girls and, most important of all, six caskets filled with diamonds, pearls, emeralds, sapphires and rubies of incomparable beauty.” He was known to travel in an entourage of Rolls-Royces filled with his aides, wives, and other attendants.
It is safe to assume that the maharaja put up a similar display of pomp and circumstance when he arrived at the Cartier offices. With their commission in hand, Cartier set about creating a bejeweled masterpiece. In 1928, the Patiala Necklace was unveiled.
San Francisco curator Martin Chapman calls this acquisition the maharaja’s “greatest moment in jewelry,” and he was often seen wearing it at official events and in formal photographs. "Supposedly he wanted something so large and imposing because he wanted his subjects to be able to see him when he was riding on top of his elephant,” Margaret Young-Sanchez, curator at the Denver Art Museum, told CBS News in 2014.
When Bhupinder Singh died in 1938 at the age of 46, the Patiala Necklace passed into the hands of his son and successor Yadavindra Singh, who seemed to treasure the piece just as much as his father had. But beginning in the mid-1940s, life started to get a bit more difficult for the Indian princes. Yadavindra Singh wore the piece publicly one last time in 1941, after which it was never seen again.
While the maharaja’s family never confirmed what happened to the Patiala Necklace, it is believed that Yadavindra Singh might have sold the piece to help pay off his taxes after the maharajas faced the indignity of having their tax-free status revoked.
Whatever caused the famed necklace to be banished from the Maharaja of Patiala’s treasury, the next evidence of it turned up in the late 1980s when the De Beers diamond—and only the De Beers diamond—was auctioned off. The fate of its fellow gems remained unknown.
A decade later, in 1998, a Cartier curator, Eric Nussbaum, was visiting a jewelry resale shop in London when he saw a five-strand diamond platinum chain. He thought it looked familiar. “I found the necklace by pure chance,” Nussbaum told The New York Times in 2002. “The chains were separated and the stones were gone, but I recognized it right away. I told Cartier I wanted to buy it and restore it even if we had to do it with substitute gems.”
The De Beers and several of the larger diamonds were missing, as were the Burmese rubies, but Cartier set about recreating their prized design. They tried several different, less expensive precious gem replacements for the original diamonds until finally settling on cubic zirconium, which came closest to replicating the brilliance of the diamonds.
In 2002, the replica of the Patiala Necklace was unveiled and the world once again marveled at this glittering feat of craftsmanship. When it toured the states, long lines of New Yorkers waited to catch a glimpse of it in the Cartier window. “They are passers-by staring, aghast, at a fabulous piece of antique jewelry. It's not even for sale,” Wendy Moonan wrote.
Today, the Patiala Necklace continues to receive admiration, but it is no longer Cartier’s crowning achievement. New members of the class of wealthy and outrageously bejeweled have arisen to take the place of the maharajas.
In 2018, Pierre Rainero, image and heritage director for Cartier, smiled as he told The Guardian, “I can mention one [commission] recently, and I think the maharaja would be ashamed… Because the number of stones we had to assemble was much more than that one. More, much more.”
