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A collection of remarkable jewellery belonging to the late Countess of Airlie is set to go under the hammer today.
Virginia, the Dowager Countess of Airlie who died last year, was the only lady-in-waiting ever to be American.
Indeed it was at the Countess’s 70th birthday party in 2003 that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II first stepped foot into a nightclub – of course the club was Annabel’s – where both her daughters-in-law had famously dressed up as policemen to gate crash Prince Andrew’s stag party.
The club’s namesake, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, who died on Saturday morning, said in 2018: ‘The Queen was at my table, she was animated, joking and laughing, really loving it. She told me, as she left, that she’d had such a good time. I was amazed.’
The highlight of the online sale from the estate of the Dowager Countess will be an exquisite tiara, created by Garrard towards the end of 19th century.
It is thought to have been given to Virginia’s grandmother-in-law, Mabell, Countess of Airlie, by Queen Mary, either as a wedding present when the royal’s childhood friend married David Ogilvy, 11th Earl of Airlie in 1886, or in 1901 when she became the Princess of Wales.
The women had been friends since childhood, when Mabell Gore, daughter of Viscount Gore, later fourth Earl of Arran, went with her grandmother to visit the Duchess of Teck, who lived at White Lodge in Windsor Great Park with her daughter, Princess May (who would later become Queen Mary).
The Airlie Tiara is set with cushion-shaped, rose-cut and old brilliant diamonds, over 34 carats in weight, decorated as daisies and ivy which alternate across the band
The Countess of Airlie as the Queen’s Lady in waiting, is behind Queen Elizabeth II as she arrives at Sheridan College of Applied Arts and Technology in Oakville, Ontario, which she visited along with the Duke of Edinburgh
When Edward VII was crowned, tiaras were required for the ceremony and thereafter at court, so wearing one became uniform for the ladies of the aristocracy.
It is possible that Mabell, by then appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber (a lady-in-waiting), did not have a tiara to wear at Buckingham Palace or at Marlborough House, which the king used for entertaining, and so the newly minted Princess of Wales, known for her love of jewellery, generously gave her this precious piece of jewellery.
Once Mary became Queen Mary in 1910, the Countess of Airlie became an even more prominent part of the Royal Household and she wore the tiara at many state occasions. Indeed her eldest son David, by then the Earl of Airlie, was a trainbearer to Queen Mary at the coronation in 1911, and her grandson, Angus Ogilvy, married Princess Alexandra, a granddaughter of Queen Mary.
The Airlie Tiara is set with cushion-shaped, rose-cut and old brilliant diamonds, over 34 carats in weight, decorated as daisies and ivy which alternate across the band and are punctuated with pearls, two of which are saltwater and are set at the front of the headpiece.
The Countess of Airlie died three years after Queen Mary, in 1956, by which time her older grandson, David Ogilvy had married American heiress Virginia Fortune Ryan.
Virginia was born in Mayfair in 1933 and although her parents returned to the United States, each summer she would come back to the UK with her mother. Her parents were friends with Winston Churchill. In 1949, when she was 16 years old, she met her future husband, David Lord Ogilvy, at a ball at the Savoy; they married in 1952 – and in 1968, on the death of his father, he succeeded to the Earldom and Virginia would have ‘inherited’ the Airlie Tiara as the Countess of Airlie.
In 1973, Lady Airlie was appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen, like her grandmother-in-law some 63 years before, and the beautiful tiara again became a feature of court life – worn at state openings of Parliament, banquets at Buckingham Palace and abroad on royal tours with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She was one of the Queen’s most trusted companions up until September 2022 when Her Majesty died at Balmoral.
Virginia, the Dowager Countess of Airlie who died last year, was the only lady-in-waiting ever to be American
David Ogilvy, 13th Earl of Airlie and wife Virginia, Countess of Airlie
Her husband died a year later and Lady Airlie a year after that in August 2024 at the family’s castle in Scotland aged 94. Now, the countess’s son has decided to sell at auction this most regal tiara along with several other important pieces of jewellery – such as a 1900 nephrite and ruby letter opener by Fabergé, a blue enamel and diamond heart pendant also by Fabergé, a Cartier cigarette case, a Van Cleef & Arpels cigarette case and a number of pieces of jewellery by Verdura, that had belonged to her mother – a friend of Duke Fulco di Verdura.
- The collection of Virginia Fortune Ryan Ogilvy, Dowager Countess of Airlie, will be auctioned from October 22 at lyonandturnbull.com. Live bidding online starts at 1pm.
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