Posted by Baxter on February 4, 2015, 5:53 pm, in reply to "To Baxter and Arthur"
Hi Franck,
In this post from last year I speculated that this necklace is the Kuwaiti gift based on when they first appeared. At the time I had not looked closely at photos from the Kuwaiti banquet (which are mislabeled on Getty Images as being in Abu Dhabi.) However, the only pics I have from the return banquet (where gifts from the host were often worn) are not of good quality. We should not compare them to the HQ photos we have from other events. Here is one from Kuwait next to a photo of a similar quality from Tuvalu where the 'Christmas Message' pearls were worn.
Looking at the Kuwaiti photo, if we were not extremely familiar with HM's earrings it is not really apparent that they contain large pearl drops, so I don't think this photo should be used for comparative purposes. However, looking at the necklaces side-by-side, I think it is definitely possible that they are the same. They appear slightly shorter in Kuwait due to being worn on top the collar of HM's dress.
It is interesting that you feel these pearls are from Queen Mary. Are you basing this solely on the fact that they are worn with other jewels from Queen Mary? I've only ever seen Queen Mary wearing necklaces made of strands of perfectly round pearls. Also she also did not seem to favor highly graduated strands as these are. But of course that doesn't mean they didn't belong to Queen Mary. We never saw her wearing the graduated pearl necklace which was left to the Duke of Windsor.
As I've said before, my theory is strictly speculation on my part and I welcome other viewpoints. I suppose we'll never know for sure until information is released from official sources.