Buckingham Palace is refusing to explain why 11 pieces of jewellery potentially worth £80m that were official gifts to the royal family are not held in a trove of national heritage.
The jewels, which have been worn by Queen Elizabeth II; Camilla, the Queen Consort, and Catherine, Princess of Wales, are not contained in the royal collection, the custodian of culturally significant items held in trust for the nation.
The pieces include a set of aquamarine jewellery, four brooches and six necklaces, including an extraordinary Cartier necklace of emerald- and brilliant-cut diamonds worth £4m given to the late Queen by an Indian prince.
At least four of the items were presented by heads of state. The palace’s policy states that “as a general rule” gifts to the sovereign from another monarch or head of state “automatically” become part of the royal collection, a body that manages items held by the sovereign in trust for the nation.
The Royal Collection Trust, which manages the collection, confirmed that it does not have custody of the 11 jewels.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson declined multiple invitations to explain the current ownership of the 11 pieces. They suggested the royals do not regard the jewellery as their private property and that the items, which were given to the late queen between 1947 and 1979, “may” in the future be added to the royal collection.
“Official gifts are not the personal property of the member of the royal family who receives them, but may be held by the sovereign in right of the crown or designated in due course as part of the royal collection,” the spokesperson said. They declined to explain why the items were not already in the royal collection.
Cost of the crown is an investigation into royal wealth and finances. The series, published ahead of the coronation of King Charles III, is seeking to overcome centuries of secrecy to better understand how the royal family is funded, the extent to which individual members have profited from their public roles, and the dubious origins of some of their wealth. The Guardian believes it is in the public interest to clarify what can legitimately be called private wealth, what belongs to the British people, and what, as so often is the case, straddles the two.
The palace’s policy on official gifts was first formulated in 1995 and updated in 2003. The guidelines state that items received on state visits or in connection with the royal family’s official role are not their private property.
All of the pieces identified by the Guardian were given to the queen before the guidelines were established. There is nothing in the policy that addresses gifts received by the royal family or the monarch before the code was set up.
The potential value of the items is hard to determine. Were anyone else to sell them, they would collectively be worth at least £8m, according to expert valuers.
However, analysis of previous auctions of jewels that were owned or worn by royals suggest the link to the Windsors would add a premium that could easily increase their total value to well over £80m.
‘An exceptional jewel’
Among the gifts identified are pieces of jewellery given to the queen at her wedding in 1947 and at her coronation a few years later by state officials.
By far the most valuable is the Nizam of Hyderabad diamond necklace. Crafted in its original configuration by Cartier in 1935 and later reset, the necklace contains more than 300 platinum-set diamonds, including a detachable double-drop pendant. It was bought in 1947 as a wedding present for the then Princess Elizabeth by Mir Osman Ali Khan, the last ruler of the state of Hyderabad in India.
It is one of the late queen’s most elaborate diamond necklaces and one she wore regularly. It has also been worn by Catherine, now the Princess of Wales, including at a gala at the National Portrait Gallery in 2014.
Sara Abey, a gemologist and jewellery merchant who estimated the value of several items for the Guardian, said the necklace could be worth more than £4m before considering its association with the British royal family.
“Having a renowned maker, important history and notable provenance, the queen’s Nizam of Hyderabad necklace is an exceptional jewel,” she said.
Valuing the royal family’s private jewellery collection is exceptionally difficult. A professional valuation would require each stone of each item to be inspected for occlusions or other imperfections that cannot be detected by the naked eye.
Even where an estimate can be made, there is then the ‘royal premium’: the association with the royal family, which could multiply the value many times over.
In 1989, Laurence Krashes, a senior assessor for the US jeweller Harry Winston, described the task as ‘like landing a plane in fog without a radar’. He assessed the family’s collection – excluding the royal premium – at £36m for the royal journalist Andrew Morton.
The Guardian has identified several items Krashes did not consider, such as the Cullinan IX ring and a diamond necklace given to the then Princess Elizabeth as a wedding gift in 1947. Sara Abey, a fellow of the Gemmological Association and jewellery merchant, provided the Guardian with estimates for the additional pieces.
Morton multiplied Krashes’ estimates tenfold to try to achieve a more realistic value. However an auction of the late Princess Margaret's jewellery in 2006 suggests this may have been a considerable underestimate. A Guardian analysis found items sold for an average of 18 times the auction house’s top-end estimate.
Since that 2006 auction, the value of royal jewellery has increased further. Fifty of Margaret’s items went on sale again in 2020, with one diamond ring having an asking price of £1.1m, almost 10 times the 2006 sale price of £142,000. This was already higher than the original auction valuation of £70,000
Opting for caution, the Guardian has used a multiplier of 10 to reflect a conservative estimate of the royal premium.
Another diamond necklace was given to the queen as a wedding present by distinguished individuals from the City of London.
A parure of Brazilian aquamarines – a necklace and a bracelet – presented in 1953 as a coronation gift from the people of Brazil was liked so much by the queen that she privately commissioned a specially made tiara to wear alongside them.
This, like many of the 11 items identified by the Guardian, was worn regularly by the queen. Other members of the royal family have also been seen wearing some of the gifts.
A diamond necklace presented to the queen during a state visit to the United Kingdom in 1967 by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was lent to Diana, Princess of Wales in 1983. The necklace was originally made by the American jeweller Harry Winston in 1952 and could be worth as much as £9m.
Twelve years later, during a reciprocal visit by the queen to Saudi Arabia, Faisal’s successor, King Khalid, gave her another of Winston’s diamond necklaces, now worth more than £8m.
A necklace of turquoises from the then president of Pakistan, Muhammad Ayub Khan, given on a state visit in 1966, and four brooches are among the other official gifts identified by the Guardian. These include the Flame Lily brooch, which was presented to Elizabeth on her 21st birthday by the children of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), who were each asked to donate three pence to pay for it.
The diamond necklaces and brooches were included in a 2012 reference volume published by the Royal Collection Trust or exhibited in Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration display.
The exhibition was described as including “an unprecedented display of a number of the queen’s personal jewels – those inherited by Her Majesty or acquired during her reign.”
