You know you have a serious amount of charisma when multiple people who are not family members leave you glittering jewels in their wills. Such was the luck of the Queen Mum, who famously received the gigantic Greville jewel bequest from a family friend; even better, she also inherited today’s piece, the Courtauld Thomson Scallop-Shell Brooch, from a loyal subject.
The brooch, which features a shell motif in diamonds studded with a single round pearl, was made in 1919 in London by the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co., Ltd. It was designed in part by Sir Courtauld Thomson, who was the son of a famous Scottish inventor. His sister, the writer Winifred Hope Thomson, ended up with the piece, and she was the one who left it to the Queen Mum in 1944.
According to Hugh Roberts, Thomson noted that she willed the brooch to the Queen Mum “as a mark of respect and profound admiration.” She also indicated that she wanted it to be a brooch that was passed from queen to queen in Britain.
The Queen Mum wore the gorgeous brooch throughout her lifetime. It was clearly a valued possession, because she chose to wear it on her 100th birthday in August 2000. When she died two years later, the brooch was inherited by her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
The Queen wore the scallop-shell brooch often during the twenty-year period that it was part of her jewelry collection. She even selected it for the wedding of her eldest granddaughter, Zara Phillips, in 2011.
Appropriately, the Queen has also worn it for important events related to her mother, including a memorial service marking ten years since the Queen Mother’s death and the unveiling of her statue on the Mall in 2009.
She also wore the brooch for more general occasions. Here, she wears the brooch on Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot in June 2011.
In the summer of 2017, she wore it to welcome King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain to London at the start of their state visit to Britain.
After Queen Elizabeth II’s death in 2022, the brooch passed to her son, King Charles III. His wife, Queen Camilla, wore it for the first time at Royal Ascot the following June.
She also selected it for an official visit to Kenya in October 2023.
The diamonds and pearls of the brooch, as well as the teardrop-shaped diamond droplets that cascade from the piece, also make it a suitable choice for occasions of mourning and remembrance. In 2017, Queen Elizabeth II wore it for the funeral of a cousin and close friend, Patricia Knatchbull, Countess Mountbatten.
Appropriately, Queen Camilla chose the brooch for another important moment of remembrance, the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, in June 2024. The appearance called back to the piece’s two previous royal owners, the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II, both of whom played important supporting roles in Britain during the war. Eighty years after it arrived in the royal vaults, the brooch continues to sparkle today.
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