The Queen’s Jewels – Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Tribute

When a State Visit comes around, the Queen often gets out a little-known piece and wears it as a compliment to its giver – suggesting that she thinks of it as a public item. But there is no list to say so.

Yet, unlike the acquisitive Queen Mary, the Queen does not seem to set a personal store by her magnificent jewels. Her own taste, from the Williamson Pink setting, through her parents’ gifts of flower basket brooches, to her ruby tiara, suggests a penchant for traditional flower designs.

Designers

Although the Queen can be seen on the 1969 Royal Family BBC television film saying of the historic Timur Ruby that ‘one should get a dress designed so that one could wear it,’ none of her dress designers can ever recall being asked to make a dress to go with certain gems. As Hardy Amies has said, with his quizzical smile: ‘Her Majesty has plenty to choose from.’

For all her pride in a collection that can be traced like the bloodstock lines of her beloved racehorses, the Queen certainly considers first and foremost her own personal mementoes.

She wears, of course, her engagement ring that Prince Philip had made, along with a diamond and platinum bracelet, from stones belonging to his mother, Princess Andrew of Greece. Another precious gift from her husband, for their fifth wedding anniversary in 1952, was a bracelet with their interlocking initials ‘E’ and ‘P’.

The Queen also wears with fondness the tiny Cartier diamond and platinum watch given to her by the French government to replace the one she lost in the war while haymaking.

And the Queen has one piece of jewellery that she would not swap for all the glittering gems in the Tower of London: the necklace that Prince Charles made his mother when he was 10 years old and which still sits on her dressing table today, perhaps the most prized in the collection of the Queen’s jewels.

See also: Around the World: The Queen’s Travels – Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Tribute