Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World
Happy National Day to all of our lovely readers from Belgium! Today is the annual celebration of the inauguration of King Leopold I in 1831. To help add some glitter to the day, we’re looking at one of the family’s most delicate, lovely tiaras: the diamond diadem worn by Princess Claire at her wedding to Prince Laurent.
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| The Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik (Photo: Grand Ladies Site) |
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| The Queen with the Hurleys at Buckingham Palace (Photo: Jonathan Brady – WPA Pool /Getty Images) |
Queen Elizabeth II held a private audience at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday with David Hurley, the Governor of New South Wales, and his wife, Linda. For the audience, we had another outing of a brooch worn recently: the Graving Dock Diamonds Brooch.
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| Photo: Jonathan Brady – WPA Pool /Getty Images |
Here’s a closer view of the brooch as worn on Tuesday by the Queen.
And here’s a clipping from a newspaper that shows a gift of five diamonds given to Princess Elizabeth in 1947 when she opened the new Graving Dock in East London. (Here’s more on the gift in an extensive thread at the Royal Jewels of the World Message Board.)
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| Photo: Arthur Edwards/WPA Pool/Getty Images |
A close-up from a few weeks ago clearly shows the five diamonds set in a bar brooch. Curiously, although she received the diamonds more than half a century ago, the brooch doesn’t appear to have been worn in public until a few years ago.
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| Photo: Jonathan Brady – WPA Pool /Getty Images |
I love the shape of this brooch — it’s a total classic. Many of the Queen’s brooches may prove challenging for future generations of Windsor women to wear, but pieces like this will be timeless components of any royal jewelry box.