This is one of those pages that came from where? Don’t have a clue. I think I saw the brooches first on a FB reel. I had so much fun researching!
As sovereign, the Queen ‘owns’ the land, palaces and treasures accumulated by the reigning families for the best part of a millennium, estimates tend towards £20 billion.
Within these treasures, QEII owned a historic collection of jewels, many of them brooches. Much of the collection was designed for residing queens and queens consort, though some kings have added to the collection. Most of the jewelry was purchased from other European heads of state and members of the aristocracy or handed down by older generations of the royal family, often as birthday and wedding presents. Queen Elizabeth II owned more than 300 items of jewelry, including 98 brooches, 46 necklaces, 37 bracelets, 34 pairs of earrings, 20 tiaras, 15 rings, 14 watches and 5 pendants.1
Edward VII, eldest son of Queen Victoria and great-grandfather of QEII, issued a royal warrant to Cartier in 1904 to design pieces for the British Royal Family.
By 1937, Cartier held 589 loose diamonds on behalf of The Queen Mother. Not knowing what to do with that quantity, jewelers at Cartier decided to create a contemporary ornament. Cartier used 197 diamonds from the Queen’s collection. The result was a beautiful but unusually large brooch, almost 7-inches long in a form of a stem of lilies with two open flowers, pave-set with diamonds. Six pear-shaped brilliants form buds. It was nicknamed the”foot-long brooch.
The Queen Mother wore this brooch on quite a few occasions in late 1940s and early 1950s but later opted for more delicate pieces. This piece, along with the bulk of the Queen’s jewelry, was inherited by Elizabeth II upon her mother’s death in 2002.
Fox Photos/Getty Images
Queen Mother wore the Cartier Diamond Lily Brooch in her widowhood, sometimes in a smaller version. Its appearance declined after the mid ’60s. Royal Ascot in 1969 was the Lily Brooch’s final public appearance for decades.
This is not one of QEII’s favorites: the weight and the size make the brooch a rather tricky one to wear.
This Mugal2-carved emerald and diamond brooch was presented from the Maharanis of India to Queen Mary of England, Empress of India, in 1911:
The Queen is seen wearing the realm-gifted piece to the 2016 Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey.
When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip went on their Australian Tour in 1954, the Australian Government turned to Altmann and Cherny, Australia’s esteemed opal specialists, to find the finest opal gemstone. They found the finest opal ever to be mined in the Andamooka mines. The stunning Opal is a staggering 17,000 carats and was last valued at $1,800,000. John Altmann always maintained it was the finest opal he had ever polished.
The Australian Opal Spray brooch was wedding gift presented to the monarch by the Returned Sailors’ Soldiers and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia. The brooch features a golden setting which mimics a spray of gum, and is set with Australian black opals and diamonds.
In 2011, during her last official tour of Australia, the Queen once again chose to wear the brooch:
The hope is expressed that the gift will serve to remind Your Royal
Highness of the millions of loyal subjects in Australia whose wish is
for your future happiness.
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, had been given the Fringe Tiara by her husband’s mother, Queen Mary. Commissioned by Mary in 1919, it was originally a fringe necklace that was a wedding day gift from Queen Victoria, which she wore in her hair. However, Mary was fond of customizing her jewelry pieces to make them into something new and more to her taste.
lady if the leeds bracelet
1 Keith Dovkants (28 January 2014). “The Monarch and her money”. Tatler. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
2 The Mugals were a powerful Islamic dynasty of Turco-Mongol origin who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from the 16th -19th century, establishing a rich empire known for its stunning art, and architecture, The Taj Mahal, for instance.
Queen Mary’s Diamond Bar Choker Bracelet 
.Queen Mary’s Diamond Bar Choker Bracelet
Queen Mary of Teck owned several significant bracelets. She loved her sparkles. Queen Mary was the first to own this diamond choker, just one of many diamond chokers in her collection. After Queen Mary’s death, the stunning choker wasn’t seen again until 1975, when the Queen Mother famously wore it as a bracelet in her 75th birthday portrait.
Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old
secondhand diamonds than none at all. -Mark Twain
