The Queen held an in-person audience at Windsor Castle with a fellow head of state on Tuesday, and she wore an important pair of heirloom jewels for the occasion.
The Queen welcomed the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, to Windsor Castle on Tuesday. Sheikh Tamim has been the ruler of Qatar since 2013, when his father, Sheikh Hamad, abdicated in his favor. We recently discussed the Emir’s state visit to Spain, where he and his wife gifted a gorgeous pair of diamond earrings to Queen Letizia.
The Queen wore a floral printed dress in shades of purple, green, and blue for her audience with the Emir.
She accessorized with small pearl stud earrings, a two-stranded pearl necklace, and a pair of diamond brooches in the shape of ivy leaves.
The brooches are the Greville Ivy Leaf Clips. The Queen Mother gave them to the Queen as a 21st birthday present in April 1947 during their royal visit to South Africa. The clip brooches, which were made by Cartier, came from the bequest of jewelry left to the Queen Mother by Dame Margaret Greville in 1942.
The Queen wore the clips often both before and after the start of her reign. Here, when she was still Princess Elizabeth, she wears the clips in 1951 for her arrival in Washington, D.C., where she was hosted for a visit by President Harry Truman. On this occasion, she pinned one of the brooches to her lapel and clipped the other to her hat.
The brooches, significantly, were the last jewels that Elizabeth was photographed wearing before her accession to the throne in 1952. The Queen has continued to wear the brooches occasionally throughout the years. Here, in 2004, she wears them for a visit to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall.
In February 2022, she wore the clips for a portrait released to mark her Accession Day. In the image, the Queen sits beside a photograph of her beloved father. The picture shows the monarch at work, sitting before one of the famous red boxes that contain her official paperwork.
Here’s one more look at the way the Queen wore the brooches for Tuesday’s audience at Windsor.
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