In celebration of the platinum jubilee, here's the story behind the necklace that the 25-year-old Queen Elizabeth II wore 70 years ago in her first official portraits as the new Queen.
In the mid-1930s, when the youngest of the Cartier brothers, Jacques Cartier, was running the London branch, business was good. The large English Art Works workshop was full of talented craftsmen creating significant pieces both for individual commissions and as stock for the elegant 175 New Bond Street showroom below.
After all, it was a decade not short of opportunities to wear high jewellery: from presentations at court, to jubilee celebrations (George V in 1935), to coronation festivities (George VI in 1937). Big necklaces were particularly on trend. This one — in diamond and platinum — was made in 1935 and appeared in Harper's Bazaar that year, modelled by the stylish Countess of Warwick (2nd image). It must have been good advertising because by the following year Cartier had sold it — but not for long.
They reacquired it in 1937. Fast forward ten years — including a world war and the death of Jacques Cartier — and the necklace, still in Cartier London (now under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Cartier), was about to attract some significant interest.
In 1947, the Nizam of Hyderabad, one of the richest men in the world (see 3rd image, on the front cover of Time Magazine), offered the then Princess Elizabeth a wedding gift from Cartier London: her choice of two items. The Princess chose this diamond necklace and a floral diamond tiara with removable diamond brooches (4th image shows it worn as both a tiara and a brooch; 5th image shows these wedding gifts in the press).
Since then, the necklace has been worn many times — including for the Queen's first official portraits by Dorothy Wilding in 1952 and on bank notes — and more recently it has been given a new lease of life, lent to younger members of the royal family (6th image). It looks as good in the 2020s as it did in the 1930s.
For more on the royal family's long relationship with Cartier, see my article for British Vogue.
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