DIAMOND TROPHY OF LOVE COLLAR

The King’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace will host a major exhibition titled The Edwardians: Age of Elegance. This groundbreaking event explores the opulence, style, and societal shifts of the Edwardian era through the lives of King Edward VII & Queen Alexandra, King George V & Queen Mary. From their family lives and personal collecting to their glittering social circles and spectacular royal events. The exhibition will showcase over 300 artifacts, many on display for the first time, including jewelry, fashion, art, and personal items.

DIAMOND TROPHY OF LOVE COLLAR

The Edwardians: Age of Elegance. Formed of seven brilliant-set panels, each with an amatory trophy of bow, quiver & torch in a laurel-wreath oval suspended from a ribbon-tie, framed by foliate brilliant-set bands. This delicately constructed collar, in the Louis XVI style, was made in March 1901 for Queen Mary when Duchess of Cornwall & York, at the beginning of the reign of King Edward VII. It was probably made by Garrard & Co. with diamonds in Gold. The diamonds were taken from a scroll and ribbon-pattern collar, which itself had been made with stones taken from seven 12-pointed stars & a pair of diamond star earrings, given by Queen Mary’s Grandmother was the (Duchess of Cambridge), in 1885. These gifts, in 1885, were presumably to mark her 18th. birthday. Diamonds were also removed from a floral diamond spray given by her aunt, Augusta, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg -Strelitz, in the same year 1885, Queen Mary. Like her husband

mother Queen Alexandra, favoured deep collar necklaces for most of her life, due to her long slim neck and the high fashion of the time. But her majesty Queen Elizabeth II. did not adopted the style, nor the Queen Mother. Although the necklace was given when she Duchess of York, who has worn it once could be the reason why.

Queen-Elizabeth had inherited it in 2002. No reference has been found to the creation of this necklace in the Garrard Ledgers the firm who supplied four diamonds & repaired it early in 1902. Equally to that there is no reference to this necklace in the Cartier Jewelry archive.