Diamond rivière necklace, late 19th century

Robert, Duke of Parma (1848-1907)

Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, Princess Consort of Bulgaria (1870-1899)

Princess Eudoxia of Bulgaria (1898-1985)

Wiener Salonblatt, 23 April 1893, no. 17, pg. 4-5, for an article about the wedding of Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma to Ferdinand I of Bulgaria listing her wedding gifts.

Princess Eudoxia of Bulgaria (1898-1985) inherited this necklace from her mother Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, Princess Consort of Bulgari (1870-1899). She considered it a demi-parure together with a pair of diamond earrings (lot 1082) and believed them to have belonged to Princess Marie Louise’s mother Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Parma (1849-1882).

Princess Marie Louise's father Robert, Duke of Parma (1848-1907), gifted her two rows of diamonds as a wedding present in 1893. Most probably, this rivière necklace corresponds to one of those rows of diamonds. It is well recorded how the Bourbon-Parma family inherited the majority of the Duchess of Angoulême's diamonds. Marie Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême (1778-1851) was the daughter and only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of France. This opens the possibility that the diamonds in this necklace may have originated with the illustrious French Royal House.