Orders, Decorations and Medals

A particularly fine Royal Household gold presentation brooch, comprising central ‘ER’ rose diamond and ruby-set cypher, surmounted by a crown, with circular dark blue enamelled band around, and additional rose diamond-set outer band with pearl droplet at base, in a Collingwood & Co. leather case, extremely fine £600-800

Provenance: Sotheby’s 26 January 1977 (Lot 148), as presented to Clara Knight by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1945.

Clara Cooper Knight was born circa 1880, the daughter of a tenant farmer on the Earl and Countess of Starthmore’s estate at St. Paul’s Walden Bury, near Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Appointed nurse to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (afterwards Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) on the latter’s birth in August 1900, she went on to perform similar duties for members of the Royal Family for the remainder of her life - not least in raising the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Awarded the Royal Victorian Medal in silver in January 1943, Knight died at Sandringham House, Norfolk in January 1946, and her funeral was attended by many of her extended “family”, including the H.M. the Queen, whose wreath of violets bore the handwritten message, ‘In loving and thankful memory - Elizabeth R.’; sold with a file of research, including several copied photographs of Knight with her assorted royal charges, and extracts from relevant biographies.

The case is by Carrington not Collingwood