QEII's diamond pear drop earrings from Queen Alexandra's wedding gift?Archived Message
Posted by Arthur on November 6, 2016, 1:12 pm
A few days ago, Beth posted on this board a picture of an engraving of some of the jewelry gifts presented in 1863 to Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she married the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of Great-Britain and Ireland). Among these gifts were a diamond riviere and a pair of matching diamond top-and-drop earrings presented by the Corporation of the City of London: http://members2.boardhost.com/royal-jewels/msg/1477208700.html
Here is the picture initially posted by Beth:
The diamond riviere is documented in Hugh Roberts' The Queen's Diamonds, as "Queen Alexandra's Collet Necklace" (pages 94-97).
Roberts mentions that the necklace and earrings are recorded in the photographic inventory of Queen Alexandra's jewels made circa 1920, and that the necklace passed to Queen Mary on Queen Alexandra's death in 1925, then to Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 on Queen Mary's death.
I wondered what happened with the matching earrings, whose whereabouts remain less clearly documented.
As the engraving seems to be very accurate about the details of the jewels, even the slightest ones (e.g. the shape of each collet of the necklace, the number of diamonds in the cross, etc.), I take for granted that the depiction of the earrings is faithful to their real aspect.
I have noticed on the drawing above that the pear-shaped drop of the earring on the left looks a bit rounder than the pear-shaped drop of the earring on the right, which looks more elongated, and with a sharper cushion-shape on the bottom side of the drop.
These distinctive details have reminded me of another pair of diamond earrings in Queen Elizabeth II's collection, the ones called by Leslie Field "The Queen's Pear Drop Earrings" in her book The Queen's Jewels (page 52) (which are NOT Queen Victoria's coronation earrings). The "Queen's Pear Drop Earrings" "were made from family stones" (according to Field) and display the same distinctive features as Queen Alexandra's wedding gift earrings: a rounder shape for the pear drop on the left, and a more elongated shape for the earring on the right, with a more accentuated cushion-shape at the bottom of the drop:
Therefore I think that these earrings could have been made from Queen Alexandra's wedding gift earrings from the City of London - with two obvious alterations, of course: - the removal of the large round diamond at the top of each of the original earrings presented by the City of London - and the changing of the position of the tiny diamond which, on the engraving of the City of London's gift, is between the (later removed) top large round diamond and the smaller round diamond in the middle; in the current version, this tiny diamond is now interspersed between the small round diamond (formerly in the middle of each earrings, and now at the top) and the pear-shaped drop.
We had also established earlier on this board that these "pear drop earrings" had been used by Queen Mary as drops added to a diamond brooch (brooch later turned by Queen Elizabeth II into... another pair of earrings!):
What do you think?
The only remaining question is: what happened to the large round diamonds removed from the original City of London wedding gift earrings?
on November 6, 2016, 1:12 pm
