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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Reader Mailbag: The Queen Mother’s Bandeau

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Our very own Deb W. sent in a question recently about a bandeau worn by the Queen Mother:

While watching a video about George VI and Queen Elizabeth, I was riveted by a tiara on the Queen Mother that I believe I have never seen before!  Could you give help identifying it?

Thanks for the question, Deb! I was equally intrigued by the piece, which you can see at around the 2:36 mark in this YouTube clip from King George VI and Elizabeth: A Royal Love Story (2012). (Note: all of the still images in this post are screen captures from that clip.)

The documentary does not offer a specific date for the clip featuring
the bandeau, though it does show it during the discussion of the
abdication crisis of the mid-1930s. Bertie and Elizabeth are clearly
attending a white-tie event; the man standing beside them appears to be
wearing robes with the chain of a chivalric order.

The piece that Elizabeth wears is a bandeau made up of three parallel rows of gemstones. The Queen Mum had a number of bandeau-style tiaras, including the Strathmore Rose and the double-row meander that has been worn most recently by Princess Anne. But this piece is a different one: a convertible piece of jewelry. In the 1920s, Bertie bought his new wife a set of art-deco bracelets from Cartier. Each of the five bracelets in the set features a different gemstone: one with sapphires, one with emeralds, one with rubies, and two with diamonds. This bandeau is three of those deco bracelets worn together on a frame; here’s an image of what the piece looks like in bandeau-form. She wore the bandeau on at least one other occasion, a 1933 trip to Covent Garden, pairing it with pearls.

The bracelets are still around today and are in the collection of the Queen. She wears them occasionally, but to my knowledge, the Queen Mum is the only member of the family who has worn the bandeau in public. You can see a very clear image of all five of them in one of my favorite royal books of last year, Angela Kelly’s Dressing the Queen.

Reader Mailbag: The Queen’s Brooch?

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As you might imagine, I get lots of questions in my inbox about royal jewels, everything from identification of pieces to inquiries about purchasing items. As a new feature on the site, I’m going to offer answers to some of these questions, so that you can all enjoy the glittering results! Today’s question comes courtesy reader Vanessa:

Do you know what brooch Queen Elizabeth wore to Diana’s funeral? When I
google the images, several different ones come up. Do you also happen to
know if there was any significance behind it?

Thanks for the question, Vanessa! I can understand why the Google image search for this question is confusing: not only do you get multiple instances of HM wearing brooches on black coats at the time of Diana’s funeral, you also get images of Helen Mirren from The Queen wearing replicas of the jewels. Here are some photos to help us clarify things…

When the Queen arrived in London on Friday ahead of the funeral — she’d been at Balmoral with Prince William and Prince Harry since Diana’s death — she joined Prince Philip, Prince Charles, William, and Harry on a walkabout to speak with members of the public. She dressed in black and wore a diamond and pearl brooch with her usual daytime pearl earrings and necklace.

Pearls and diamonds are both often classified as “white jewels,” and are therefore appropriate for occasions when the wearer is in mourning. This brooch, though, also includes a yellow diamond. Leslie Field describes the brooch as “an unusual long narrow diamond triangle with two pearls and a canary yellow diamond set in the middle.” [1]

The Queen wore the same brooch in her televised tribute to Diana.

The pearl and diamond brooch worn by the Queen on September 5 is
apparently not a royal heirloom piece, though she has been wearing it since the beginning of her reign. However, the brooch that she wore at
the September 6 funeral service is one of her historical treasures. It’s
the smallest of Queen Victoria’s diamond bow brooches, part of a set
ordered by Victoria from Garrard in 1858. Victoria designated the
brooches as heirlooms of the crown in her will, and they’ve been worn by
every queen since.

I’m not sure if there was a specific connection between this brooch and Diana, but the piece is an important, valuable family heirloom, one that the Queen often wears for somber occasions. She sometimes wears one of the bow brooches with her poppies for Remembrance Sunday; above, she wears the bow brooch on Remembrance Sunday in South Africa in 1999. (For the funeral of her mother, five years after Diana’s funeral, the Queen wore another of her bow brooches, Queen Mary’s Kensington bow brooch, which has a pearl drop.)

The Queen Mother was still alive in 1997, and she also attended Diana’s funeral. She wore another Victorian heirloom: a diamond brooch studded with pearls. Victoria also designated this piece as an heirloom of the crown, but the Queen Mum wore it until her death. Today, it’s worn by Queen Elizabeth II.

Have a royal jewel question that you’d like Ella to answer on the blog? Send an email to
ella@thecourtjeweller.com! 

NOTES
1. See Field, The Queen’s Jewels, p. 112.