Queen Mary's Royal Jewelry Inventory Revealed

A recent auction in England featured three brilliant photographs from the inventory of Queen Mary's famous royal jewelry collection

Recently, the Instagram account @britishroyaljewels showcased a lot offered by an auction house in England. The collection of photographs and letters included three very special images: photographs of three pages from Queen Mary’s inventory of her royal jewelry collection. Today, I’ve got a deep dive on the pieces pictured in the images.

Queen Mary, ca. 1912 (Royal Collection Trust)

Harper Field Auctioneers & Valuers, formerly Stroud Auctions, is a family business that has been providing auction services in the Cotswalds for two decades. Located in Gloucestershire, about half an hour’s drive from the King’s Highgrove Estate, the firm holds monthly auctions featuring a range of objects.

In July, the Harper Field catalogue included a lot featuring some special pictures. Lot 404 in the auction was titled “Buckingham Palace Photographs of State Apartments.” The collection, though, included much more than that. Along with several photographs of the interior of the palace, the lot also featured a pair of notebooks packed with pictures of valuable objects, as well as photographs of members of the royal family and “large photographs of exquisite jewellery.”

Harper Field

The collection, according to the lot notes, belonged to Thomas Copperwheat, who served as Master Gilder at Buckingham Palace during the reigns of Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, and King George V. He began his career as an apprentice in 1868, working on the gilding of Blackfriars Bridge, and continued in service to the royals until the 1920s. During his remarkable 55 years of work for the royal family, Copperwheat used his talents as a master craftsman to maintain and restore various gilt and lacquer objects held by the Royal Collection.

Significantly, Copperwheat was also a talented photographer. One of his obituaries, published after he died following a fall in his garden in 1937, notes that he “did a good deal of photography for Queen Mary in connection with the arrangement of her Majesty's famous collection of works of art.” That statement certainly suggests that Copperwheat is the one who helped Mary photograph her jewels for her famous inventory, and it offers a reason why some photographs of her jewelry collection would be included in this lot of his personal papers.

This is not the first time that Copperwheat’s papers have come up for auction in recent months. The lot was offered for sale at Wotton Auction Rooms in December 2023 with an estimated price of £400-£600. The papers do not appear to have sold during that auction, and when some of the items from that lot, including the jewelry photographs, were offered again in July by Harper Field, they were presented with a more modest estimate of £150-£250. Ultimately, that auction lot sold for £170.