The Queen’s Diamond Wild Rose Brooch

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The snow just keeps falling here at The Court Jeweller HQ, and I’m already wishing for spring! At least I can enjoy gorgeous flowers right now in jewelry form, including the Queen’s beautiful Diamond Wild Rose Brooch.

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The brooch features a single wild rose with foliage, made of diamonds set in bright yellow gold. We don’t know much of anything about the piece’s history, but it’s been in the Queen’s jewelry box since at least the late 1960s. The piece is almost certainly one of the “two different diamond rose sprays set in gold” described by Leslie Field in her 1987 survey of the HM’s collection, The Queen’s Jewels.

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One of the earliest known appearances of the brooch came in November 1967, during the state visit to Malta by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. She wore the brooch to tour the new site of the Royal University of Malta during the visit.

In December 1983, the Queen chose the brooch for one of her most important annual appearances: her Christmas Message.

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The brooch has continued to make sporadic appearances on the monarch in more recent years. She wore the brooch on a golden jacket for a reception honoring the Great Britain Paralympic team at Buckingham Palace in February 2009.

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Two years later, in June 2011, she chose the brooch for lunch with the Camerons at 10 Downing Street.

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Here’s a closer view of the brooch during the visit, which was a celebration of the 90th birthday of the Duke of Edinburgh.

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The Queen often goes through phases, wearing brooch several times in a year or two and then putting it away for a while. That happened with the wild rose brooch in 2011-2012, where it made several prominent appearances at home and abroad. In October 2011, HM wore the brooch for a luncheon in Canberra during a ten-day tour of Australia. For the luncheon, she wore the brooch on the sunny yellow outfit she’d worn earlier that spring for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

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The Duchess herself was present for the brooch’s next major public outing: a March 2012 visit to commemorate the refurbishment of the Fortnum and Mason store in Piccadilly. The Queen was accompanied by the Duchesses of Cornwall and Cambridge for her visit to the famous food hall.

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For the Fortnum and Mason visit, the Queen wore the brooch on a light blue jacket with golden trimmings. The gold setting of the brooch coordinated nicely with the jacket’s buttons, and the light blue background allowed the details of the rose to show nicely.

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One of the Queen’s most recent appearances in the brooch came in May 2012, when she wore the jewel with a light pink coat and hat for a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

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It’s been nearly a decade since we’ve gotten a good look at the Diamond Wild Rose Brooch in public, and I’m hoping for another outing for the beautiful jewel soon!