Jewellery watchers celebrated when the Royal Collection Trust published The Queen’s Diamonds in 2012. Not only is Sir Hugh Robert’s compendium of royal brooches, tiaras, necklaces and earrings a showstopper, befitting the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee, but it provided answers to many longstanding mysteries that have swirled around Queen Elizabeth II’s jewellery collection.
One of those puzzles involved Queen Mary’s Richmond Royal Brooch. Until Robert’s book, no one knew for certain what it looked like. Suzy Menkies’s book, The Royal Jewels (1985), contains several references to the Richmond brooch, including in a letter to her mother that detailed wearing “Richmond’s pearl and diamond brooch in my hair” during a honeymoon event in 1893 with Queen Victoria. In 1913, she recorded in her dress book that she wore the “Richmond and Hampshire diamond brooches” to an event. Yet, with no photographs or illustrations naming it as the Richmond Royal Brooch, its exact description was unknown.
The problem is that Queen Mary had several diamond-and-pearl brooches in her extensive collection that could have fit the general description of the Richmond brooch. And that led to decades of confusion. Indeed, the first edition of Leslie Field’s The Queen’s Jewels (1987) features an incorrect label in an illustration of the brooch: “The line drawing of the Warwick sun brooch given to Princess May as a wedding present by the Earl of Warwick’s family.” In a photo caption, Fields states the “Warwick brooch” had only been worn once, at the opening of the New South Wales Parliament in Sydney, Australia in 1954. According to the exhaustive and authoritative From Her Majesty’s Jewel Vault site, Fields corrected that error with another error in subsequent editions, changing her label of the same brooch as a wedding gift from the Ladies of Surrey Needlework Guild (likely because it was mislabelled in early photos of wedding gifts). That Surrey name held until Roberts corrected the record.
Now that its origins are known, everyone can admire the brooch by its real name. For, while it’s a sizable brooch, it’s also a marvel of Victorian design.
ROYAL BROOCH COMPOSITION
The diamond-and-pearl brooch is of pierced scroll design. The gold-and-silver mount is pavé set with brilliant diamonds. The diamond-and-pearl centre as well as the pearl pendant are detachable. There is a loop at the top to allow the brooch to be worn as a pendant, as well as more loops at the bottom for additional pendants to be attached.
Interestingly, Queen Mary’s famous tinkering of her jewels extended to this brooch. According to Roberts, its pearl pendant was used as a drop on the Lover’s Knot Tiara, when it was created in 1913. Some nineteen years later, when the tiara was again modified by Mary by making its large pearl uprights detachable, the pendant returned to the brooch. Size: 9.7 cm x 7.5 cm
CREATION
It was made by Hunt & Roskell in 1893. The brooch cost a reported 500 pounds (the equivalent of 63,000 pounds or US$81,000 today), according to the Daily News from June 24, 1893, as footnoted in Robert’s book.
The jewellery and silversmith firm has a storied history. Its origins trace back to the most famous of English silversmiths, Paul Storr. He set up Storr & Co. in 1819. After a series of name changes that reflected new partners being added to Storr’s firm, as well as their deaths, Hunt & Roskell came into being in 1843. As its reputation grew, its wares were displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and it received a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria.
Its silverware were in high demand, befitting the elaborate social events of the Victorian era. As well, Hunt & Roskell was known for its jewellery, including tiaras that could be converted into brooches, necklaces and even hair ornaments. Though John Hunt’s son died in 1879 and Robert Roskell died in 1888, the firm continued under their names but with new management until the mid-1960s, according to the British Museum.
PROVENANCE
The Town of Richmond gave it to Princess May of Teck as a present for her wedding to Prince George, Duke of York (the future Queen Mary and King George V). The Richmond connection to the bride comes from her family’s long occupancy of the White Lodge in Richmond Park. The Palladian mansion was completed in 1730, during the reign of King George II. Once residence of a few prime ministers, it became home to Queen Victoria’s first cousin, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge and her husband, Francis, Duke of Teck, in 1870. (Today, the building is a residence and school for students, ages 11 to 16, of the Royal Ballet School.) The Richmond Royal Brooch was worn often by Queen Mary, most famously at the lavish Devonshire House Ball in 1897 when she wore it as a pendant of a pearl necklace. Upon her death in 1953, it was inherited by the present Queen.
WORN
The size of Queen Mary’s Richmond Royal Brooch makes it a difficult piece of jewellery to wear during the day time. Indeed, Leslie Fields reported that it had only been worn once by the present Queen—during the 1954 coronation tour of Australia—before the publication of her book in 1987. More recently, however, Queen Elizabeth II has taken to wearing it fairly regularly, both with and without its pearl pendant drop. Most famously, she wore it at the wedding of her grandson, Prince Harry, to Meghan Markle at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2018. Later that year, she wore it to hold a cluster of poppies at the Festival of Remembrance, held the evening before Remembrance Sunday services.
