#British Aristocracy

[la-belle-histoire]

Portrait of Anastasia Mikhailovna de Torby, Philip de László. 1913.

#aesthetic #art #art history #fashion #historical fashion #historical art #women in art #women #1910s #de laszlo #Anastasia #Anastasia mikhailovna de torby #Romanov family #Romanovs #morganatic romanovs #imperial Russia #Anastasia wernher #Russian royals #British aristocracy #yellow aesthetic #edwardian aesthetic #Edwardian fashion #Edwardian era

[oceancentury]

Nicholas Galitzine as the 1st Duke of Buckingham in Mary and George (2024).

#nicholas galitzine #mary and george #gay history #history #british history #red white and royal blue #gif #my gif #royalty #royal #aristocracy #british aristocracy #duke of buckingham #oceancentury #mary & george #tv and film

[tiarascrowns]

An Impressive Edwardian Aquamarine and Diamond Brooch

"Introducing an impressive Edwardian aquamarine and diamond brooch formerly the property of Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Vicountess Astor

The pediment with a step cut aquamarine with canted corners, estimated to weigh 87.82 carats, within a millegrained surround of eight cut diamonds, approximately 0.76 carats total, suspending a large briolette aquamarine drop, 5.4cm long, with a banded and pierced scrolled rose cut diamond set cap, suspended from a rose cut diamond bale.

The brooch is a stunning 10.8cm in total length and is estimated at £15,000-20,000 (+fees).

Excellent depth of colour

This classic Belle Epoque jewel was made in 1910, it is however unsigned, and was possibly made in either the US or UK. The mounting is platinum fronted gold, the strength of which allows for a minimal, light setting so showing off the aquamarines to their best effect.

These stones are of top gem quality (probably Brazilian) with excellent depth of colour; today aquamarines such as these would be designated ‘Martha Rocha’ in colour. Martha Rocha, was a Brazilian beauty queen in the 1950s, and she was known for her brilliant, captivating eyes."

Dreweatts

#brooch #edwardian jewelry #british aristocracy #aquamarine #aquamarines #diamond #diamonds #tiara crown #tiaras crowns #tiarascrowns #tiaracrown #dreweatts

[europesroyalsjewels]

Fabergé Myrtle Wreath Tiara ♕ Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster

#british aristocracy #aristocrat #british aristocrat #diamond tiara

[tiaramania]

TIARA ALERT: Katherine O'Connor wore the Countess of Lindsay's Pearl Fringe Tiara for her wedding to The Honorable David Lindesay-Bethune in at Elie Parish Church in St. Andrews, Scotland on 16 September 2023.

#Tiara Alert #Katherine O'Connor #Countess of Lindsay #United Kingdom #British Nobility #British Aristocracy #bridal tiara #pearl #fringe tiara #tiara #diadem

[europesroyals]

13/03 - Favorite amethyst tiara

Marchioness of Tavistock Amethyst Tiara

#royaltiarachallenge24 #british aristocracy #aristocrat

[mahoganygold213]

The Gentlemen (2024) S1.E6 ∙ All Eventualities Theo James as Eddie Horniman, Duke of Halstead Giancarlo Esposito as Stanley Johnston

#theo james #the gentlemen #eddie horniman #the gentlemen netflix #netflix gifs #giancarlo esposito #british aristocracy #season 1 ep 6 #lol #tv series #comedy #drama #tv edit #blaze🔥 #edward horniman #stanley johnston #kaya scodelario #harry goodwins #susie glass #jack glass #duke of halstead

[rosalyn51]

How realistic is Downton Abbey?

British Heritage Travel, March 27, 2023

The period mellow drama has fans around the world but today we ask just how realistic is Downton Abbey?

From Boston to Brisbane, Downton Abbey has fans around the globe. The sweeping period drama chronicles the historical events and early 20th-century lives of the residents of stately Downton Abbey, home to the Crawleys - the Earl of Grantham and his family - and all who ebb and flow in its umbra.

Drawing on the upstairs/downstairs tradition of Upstairs, Downstairs, the structure itself is a popular, proven series format. With almost three-dozen characters living at Downton, the viewer is expected to follow and care for, there’s someone or several with whom anyone can identify.

The lavish production of the Edwardian nobility’s elegant world is both dizzying and dazzling. Upstairs, this world is governed by the conventions of the aristocracy as much as by the hierarchical order radiating from the Earl of Grantham, his mother, the Dowager Countess, and his American-born wife, Cora. Downstairs, the pecking order is even more rigid, with the butler, Mr. Carson, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes, unassailable at the top of the social pyramid.

There are few grays in the Downton Abbey world. Right, wrong, done, and not done are clearly known by all. Much-applauded author Julian Fellowes has made sure that we know black from white in this world as well. There are the good guys and girls and there are the villains. We can’t understand how everyone from scullery maid Daisy to Lady Grantham fails to see that footman Thomas and Lady’s maid O’Brien are a bad lot all around. Among the questions I have been asked most about Downton Abbey is how accurately the series depicts Edwardian and post-Edwardian life in an aristocratic home such as Downton. Are we getting the real picture?

How truthful is Downton Abbey?

In most respects, very. The one element that does not ring true is the easy interaction and conversation between the upstairs world of the family and their peers and the downstairs world of the hired help. That just didn’t happen (or at least not on such a scale). Most of the family wouldn’t have even known a housemaid’s name. These great country homes had back stairways for a reason. There’s not going to have been much interaction between these social sets, let alone much of an emotional connection. Of course, it always takes some element of the improbable to make a story a story instead of a dull narrative.

Downton Abbey is inexplicably situated in distant Yorkshire (probably to avoid having to weave London life into the tale). In “real life,” the series is shot at Highclere Castle, near the Berkshire market town of Newbury - about 65 miles west of London. What was originally, and probably more accurately, named Highclere House, the “castle” has been the ancestral home of the Earls of Carnarvon for more than 300 years. Its present residents are the youngish 8th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon.

Vising the real Downton Abbey

With unknown crowds of others, I went to see Highclere Castle this spring - just to catch the buzz and a few pictures. While Highclere Castle is open to the public regularly only from July through mid-September, they do open for a two-week spring season at Easter. The weather was generally gray and wet on the April Friday I was there, but the place was mobbed and the sun broke out. Most folks were there to visit Downton Abbey. In fact, a huge marquee had been erected on the back lawn to serve as an auxiliary tearoom to the regular café located downstairs in the old housekeeper’s suite.

No, somehow the crowds didn’t dampen the experience at all. I wandered the grounds and gardens, where folk were picnicking and kibitzing with the gardeners.

The stream of visitors into the house was controlled to keep the flow from feeling crowded or hurried. Stewards in each room were helpful with questions, but not obtrusive. The Earl and the estate staff are hardly oblivious to Highclere’s new reincarnation as Downton Abbey in the popular imagination. Each room contains a photo placard identifying how the room has been used and filmed in the series, from the Grand Parlor to the bedroom where the unfortunate Mr. Pamouk stayed, eh, briefly.

It’s a grand house indeed. It ought to be. Designed and built by Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Highclere is one of England’s showcase Victorian mansions. Certainly the ground floor reception rooms are recognizable from the series. You won’t see Lady Mary or Carson gliding out of the dining room—but it’s easy to imagine..

Downstairs, the old servants’ domain has long been turned to more functional service space. The path of the house visit takes you downstairs to the tearoom and out into the carriage house yard and gift shop. Vestiges of the old service quarter remain. In the lower hall, the old bell board still hangs, where maids and footmen could be summoned by bell to any room in the house. I counted the named rooms signaled on the bell board. There were 64.

What happened to the world of Downton Abbey?

The other question about the series that I’ve received time and again still remains: “Whatever happened to the world of Downton Abbey?”

Part of the enjoyment we derive from period dramas like Downton Abbey is our understanding that these are, indeed, images of times past, from a world that no longer exists and will never exist again. The halcyon life of the British landed aristocracy reflected at Downton Abbey, though, is less than a century old. Why did it disappear so quickly and so completely? Where are Britain’s Downton Abbeys today?

Well, they write books about that. There is a short answer, though, and part of it is found in the series itself: The Great War. Among other effects of the war, Europe’s conflagration virtually drained Britain of a generation of young men. For the men remaining as well as for women, new avenues of employment quickly opened up that competed well against the option of domestic service.

Britain’s economic engine had already changed, however. Wealth no longer lay in the land that supported the old aristocracy; it lay increasingly in the manufacture and in commerce. Social and political power had shifted as well. Through the early 1900s, the working classes increasingly realized the power of their voice and vote. The social institution that best-represented community for nonagricultural workers became no longer the church or chapel, but the trade union. The unions provided workers with social clubs and institutes, a small measure of the economic safety net, and incrementally a better working life. And the unions exercised the political power of their united working-class voice.

When the Labour governments came in between the wars, they began a systematic program to dislodge the landed wealth of the hereditary peerage and gentry. Among the primary means of doing so was the establishment of death duties at deliberately confiscatory levels. It was, after all, the land that provided the principal income to the estate - in the form of ground rent. As the old baron died, his family had to sell up significant quantities of land to pay the death duties. That left measurably less rental income to maintain the estate and the family.

What does that mean?

After a couple of generations, there was just nothing left - or not enough left to maintain a home-like Downton Abbey. From Devon to Durham, hundreds of families were left with these huge, magnificent, historic albatrosses around their neck. From the 1920s-1960s scores of such stately homes were simply torn down. Dozens of grand country homes were gradually ceded to the National Trust, who do a monumental job of conserving them for the nation. Most of those still in private hands open their gates, gardens, and doors to paying visitors, whose admissions serve to provide the vastly expensive maintenance costs on such arky mansions. In many cases, that’s not enough, and the enterprising old stock has enhanced their entertainment appeal with everything from safari parks and farm stands to hosting weddings.

Whatever happened to Downton Abbey? It became Highclere Castle. The series has raised the profile of Highclere Castle just as Brideshead Revisited did for Yorkshire’s Castle Howard. The swell of visitors this spring is undoubtedly only a foretaste of the paying guests the house will receive during the summer season, one hopes.

#downton abbey #downton abbey movie #hugh bonneville #michelle dockery #jim carter #phyllis logan #matthew goode #allen leech #joanne froggatt #rob james collier #laura carmichael #architect #charles barry #downton abbey tv series #british heritage #yorkshire #travel #stately home #british aristocracy #tv drama #period drama #lord grantham #the crawleys #lady mary #henry talbot #mr carson #mrs hughes

[catherinetheprincessofwales]

The Marchioness of Bath (Emma Thynn) at her home Longleat House. 18/05/23

#british aristocracy #Emma thynn #marchioness of bath #alexander mcqueen #KTD #my post

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

Lady Moyra de Vere Cavendish (née Beauclerk), 27 July 1898

Lady Moyra was the third daughter of the 10th Duke of St. Albans. She married Richard Cavendish in 1895. She lived from 1876-1942.

via the lafayette negative archive

#old photo #old photography #old photograph #victorian photograph #victorian photography #19th century #19th century photography #antique photo #antique photograph #antique photography #edwardian era #victorian era #1890s #british aristocracy #aristocracy #e

[royaljewellery]

Essex Diamond Tiara, Cartier, 1902

Clementine, Baroness Spencer-Churchil (1953)

Joan, Viscountess Ingleby (1957)

Crown Princess Margareta of Romania (1996) /

Unknown Model (December 2001 Issue of Vogue UK)

Rihanna (September 2016 Issue of W Magazine)

#british aristocracy #diamond #tiara

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Thomas Gainsborough (British, 1727-1788) Mary Little, later Lady Carr, ca.1765 Yale Center for British Art

#Thomas Gainsborough #british art #british #island kingdom #england #art #female portrait #female #portrait #Mary Little #Lady Carr #noble #nobility #aristocrat #aristocracy #english aristocracy #british aristocracy #brunette #woman #brown eyes #european fashion #fine art #european art #classical art #europe #european #oil painting #fine arts #europa #1700s

[europesroyalsweddings]

✵ May 6, 1944✵

Kathleen Kennedy & William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington

#great britain #british aristocracy #british aristocrat #aristocrat

[the-cricket-chirps]

Above: Madame Yevonde, Violet, Baroness Gagern as Europa, ca. 1935

Below: Madame Yevonde, Violet, Baroness von Gagern, 1935

#madame yevonde #yevonde middleton #british photographer #british artist #british art #art photography #celebrity portraits #portrait artist #portraiture #women photographers #woman photographer #woman artist #british aristocracy #aesthetic #beauty #modern art #art history #aesthetictumblr #tumblraesthetic #tumblrpic #tumblrpictures #tumblr art #tumblrstyle #artists on tumblr

[europesroyalsjewels]

Devonshire Diamond Tiara ♕ Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire

#british aristocracy #british aristocrat #aristocrat

[tiaramania]

TIARA ALERT: Princess Antonia, Duchess of Wellington, wore the Wellington Diamond Tiara for the State Opening of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster in London on 7 November 2023.

#Tiara Alert #Duchess of Wellington #United Kingdom #British Nobility #British Aristocracy #Princess Antonia #Prussia #Prussian Royal Family #tiara #diadem #royal jewels