Following their recent appearance at the funeral of Prince Philip, the Bahrain Pearl Drop Earrings have been in the news quite a bit. Here’s a backstory on the history of these classic royal jewels.

In November 1947, Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom married Lt. Philip Mountbatten. The princess received a haul of royal jewels as wedding gifts. Among them was a cache of seven pearls, presented in a shell, a gift from the Hakim of Bahrain.

At some point shortly after the royal wedding, two of the Bahraini pearls were used to make a new pair of earrings. The earrings feature round diamond studs, from which are suspended round- and baguette-cut diamonds in an arrangement typical of the late 1940s. The pearls are used as drops on the earrings.

In the early years of her marriage, Princess Elizabeth (who became Queen in 1952) wore the earrings quite often for gala occasions and official portraits. In this image, taken in the early 1950s, she wears the Bahrain earrings with two of her other wedding presents: the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara and the City of London Fringe Necklace.

As the years went on and the Queen’s jewelry box expanded considerably, the earrings were seen in public less frequently. In 1982, the Queen loaned them to the Princess of Wales. Diana wore the earrings with other royal jewels, including her large sapphire and diamond cluster brooch, Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara, and the Queen’s Japanese Pearl Choker Necklace, for a banquet at Hampton Court Palace during a state visit from Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus of the Netherlands. In October 2012, the Queen loaned the earrings to another daughter-in-law, the Countess of Wessex, who wore them for a performance by the Massed Bands and Bugles of The Rifles at the Royal Albert Hall.

In more recent years, the Queen has worn the earrings occasionally again herself. Above, she wears them with Queen Alexandra’s Wedding Gift Brooch and the Queen Anne and Queen Caroline Pearl Necklaces for the Festival of Remembrance in November 2015.

On Remembrance Sunday in November 2016, we all spotted the earrings on the Duchess of Cambridge as she stood on a balcony overlooking the Cenotaph. Since then, Kate has been the exclusive wearer of the earrings.

Kate also wore the earrings for the Remembrance Sunday commemorations in 2019.

Since receiving the earrings as a long-term loan, Kate has worn them for various significant royal events. In June 2017, she wore them for the first day of Royal Ascot, pairing them with a white lace dress and coordinating hat.

In June 2019, she wore them as she rode in the carriage procession ahead of Trooping the Colour, part of the Queen’s official birthday celebrations.

For the funeral service for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in Windsor on April 17, she wore the earrings with another piece of jewelry on loan from the Queen: the Japanese Pearl Choker Necklace. Media outlets (unsurprisingly) sprang on the fact that the same combination of jewels had been worn by Diana, Princess of Wales for that 1982 banquet. (They do love a Diana connection.) I think there’s more resonance in the fact that Kate chose to wear a gift from the 1947 royal wedding for the service, and that she’d previously worn the necklace for the celebrations of the Queen and the Duke’s 70th wedding anniversary.