The story about the tiara kept during 50 years Archived Message
Posted by Vincent on February 1, 2016, 2:22 pm, in reply to "Re: Greville bequest - a question raised - "
Here is the story of that anecdote about a tiara being kept in a drawer during 50 years. it was quite a long time ago, maybe 15 years. I can remember that the queen mother was still alive. There was an exhibition of tiaras at Wartsky, in aid of the samaritans, if I remember correctly. It was a rather small exhibition, before jeffrey Munn's wrote his wonderful book. The queen mother had loaned a tiara and earl Spencer had lent princess Diana's wedding tiara. I was writing an article for my magazine, Point de Vue, and the people at Wartski had been very helpful allowing a photographer and myself to come over and photograph some of the tiaras. While examining the tiara lent by the queen mother (Strathmore daisy tiara) which had not been seen for a long time, I said something like : " how amazing the queen mother's collection must be". And the person who had been at Clarence house, to collect the tiara just answered : "You have no idea. Some jewels have been kept there for 50 years. You don't even know they still exist and then you open a drawer and you find something which has long been forgotten." Then I asked if he was referring to the Delhi durbar tiara which had not been seen for 45 or 50 years at the time. And the person, answered : "Yes, but there are others". I did not used that quote at the time, because the queen mother was alive. Then a few years after she passed away, we suddenly saw that tiara again in the hair of the duchess of Cornwall. And I must have told or written that story then. But the fact remain that what the gentleman had said was true. Another thing I do remember about that day, is that I had princess Diana's wedding tiara in my hand during at least half an hour. And I had a lot of fun dismantling it entirely and then putting all the elements back on the frame. Those moments happen. And sometimes you do get informations. Frankly I would not have last a very long time in that business if I had started inventing these kind of stories. Going back to Leslie Fields or Suzy Menkes, I think we owe them a lot. They were the first to write about english royal jewels and most of their informations, not to mention their photographs, we use a lot, on this board and other places. So, I guess some of their informations were not simple guess, but real informations provided by people who know. In my experience, the best way to get informations about any jewels, is the jewelers. They are the only one who have been keeping archives. And sometimes they still work on pieces which they have made a very long time ago. Vincent
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