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    Re: QEII's earrings Archived Message

    Posted by Arthur on March 11, 2015, 2:10 am, in reply to "Re: QEII's earrings"

    Joye,

    I did not suggest that I have found the certain, absolute and definitive answer to the question you have initially asked. I just offered a suggestion, a possible answer, with the appropriate conditional/interrogative form ("could this be...?").

    What I know is that the Bahrain earrings could match the description given by Leslie Field ("pendant pearls suspended from 5 tiers of collet and baguette cut diamonds"):
    - 1st tier (from the top): one large collet diamond
    - 2nd tier: one small collet diamond
    - 3rd tier: three baguette diamonds
    - 4th tier: two small collet diamonds
    - 5th tier: one small collet diamond
    - and a pearl hanging from the diamond mount, thus technically a "pearl pendant".

    What we also know, thanks to the Royal collection, is that the two pearls hanging from the Bahrain earrings, were presented to the then Princess Elizabeth by the ruler of Bahrain in 1947 as a wedding gift (and not in 1953 as a Coronation gift):
    http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/microsites/royalwedding1947/object.asp?row=14&exhibs=GIFTABROAD&grouping=

    Can we be 100% sure that the Bahrain earrings are the ones described by Field? Of course, we can not be sure, as Field does not provide any picture. But the description matches.

    I am aware that Field says that the earrings described in her book were never worn by the Queen, whereas I have found pictures of the young Princess/Queen Elizabeth II wearing the Bahrain earrings. But could Field be wrong on this point? Possibly. She was wrong on other points. About these earrings, she could have "missed" the pictures I have posted (or she could have seen them, but without identifying the earrings). As Queen Elizabeth II had not worn these earrings in public after the mid-1950s, maybe the people who provided Field with information in the 1980s were not aware that the earrings had been worn in the 1950s. I have no certainty: I do not say that Field is wrong, but that she could be wrong.

    And as Beth1 has pointed out, the Bahrain earrings are not mentioned elsewhere in Field's book (if it had been the case, we could have deduced that she was refering to two different pairs of earrings).

    I have done my best to try to find an answer to Joye's initial question. If anyone has a better suggestion to offer, let he/she do it.


    Source: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/2081180/hm-queen-elizabeth-ii-b-1926

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