In the aftermath of World War I, India’s princes enjoyed a more relaxed relationship with their British rulers and found they could travel and express their opinions more freely than ever before. British officials began to treat them more as social equals and a forum for princely opinion, the Chamber of Princes, was set up.

Some princes moved in diplomatic circles, too, including attending the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919 and at the emergent League of Nations. In the long run, it was to be a false dawn but they reveled in their new found freedom as globetrotters and cemented their relationships with European jewelers.

One of the princes most often seen in the jewelry showrooms of Europe was Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala in the Punjab. He was an avid traveler and moved among the cream of society and, above all, loved to shop. In 1900, he was said to have spent over a quarter of his state’s revenues on travel and personal expenses.

Paris was his favorite destination and he even commissioned two French architects to build a palace in his tiny state capital in the style of a French chateau, with grounds laid out in homage to those of Versailles.

Timepieces were a passion; he was said to have owned more than 250 clocks and watches, many of them from Cartier. However, he also bought jewels in New York, although the results of one spending spree, thought to have been worth $4 million, were lost when a steamship carrying some of his jewels was sunk in the Mediterranean in 1916.

Some compensation for his loss came ten years later when Cartier created for him a spectacular turban ornament featuring a hexagonal emerald of 177 carats, as well as diamonds and pearls. Altogether there were 15 large and unusual emeralds from Jagatjit’s collection. He wore it at his own golden jubilee celebrations in 1926, at the silver jubilee celebrations of King George V in 1935 and at the coronation of King George VI in 1937.

In the two decades after World War I, Jagatjit Singh shared the royal limelight in Paris with Tukoji Rao III Holkar, ex-Maharajah of Indore, a large and wealthy Maratha state in central India. Tukoji Rao inherited close to half-a-million pounds worth of jewelry from his forefathers, but between 1911 and 1926 he almost doubled its contents.

Among his purchases were two beautiful pear-shaped Golconda diamonds, each weighing more than 46 carats, which became known as the Indore Pears and were the start of a long and fruitful partnership with the French jewelry designers Chaumet.

Chaumet had other royal Indian clients, among them the rulers of Baroda, Cooch Behar, Kapurthala and Kashmir, and produced a range of turban ornaments, necklaces, bracelets, brooches and tunic buttons for them, but their grandest creations were for Tukoji Rao Holkar and his family.

Not all of India’s roving princes made France their home away from home, however. For instance, Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, Maharajah Jamsahib of Nawanagar, a small Rajput principality in western India, preferred England and Ireland each summer, acquiring a reputation as a quintessential English gentleman, adored throughout the British empire as a cricketer of legendary prowess and grace. It was at the London branch of Cartier that he indulged his love of jewelry.

NOTEBOOK: Cartier’s largest single commission from an Indian client was the remodeling of the crown jewels of the Maharajah of Patiala, Sir Bhupinder Singh. Begun in 1925, the work continued until 1928, when an exhibition of the finished pieces was held in Paris. There were two enormous diamond necklaces, one of uncut stones and one with the De Beers diamond of 234.69 carats, diamond collars, pearl and ruby bead necklaces, bracelets for the upper and lower arm, belts, buttons, rings and errings, some using the traditional forms of Indian jewelry; others in a modern idiom.