Maple Leaf Brooch: Iconic, symbolic, and instantly recognizable
The diamond brooch has been worn by royal women since 1939
Update: The Maple Leaf Brooch is one of the few pieces of jewellery in Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style, the exhibition that opened on Friday at the King’s Gallery of Buckingham Palace.
It’s protected behind glass and so sparkly that my images don’t do it justice. Still, what does come across is the organic, undulating shape of the brooch, which even mimics the veining of a real maple leaf.
As you can tell, I’m currently in London. I will have a lot more on the exhibition and other royal happenings in upcoming posts. In the meantime, I’m removing the paywalls of this post on the brooch that I published in 2024. Enjoy!
Seeing Queen Camilla wearing the Maple Leaf Brooch in her official Canadian portrait made this royal jewellery fan very happy. For nearly a century, it has represented the link between monarchy and the people of Canada.
It is one of the most iconic and recognizable brooches in the palace jewellery vault and one that hasn’t been seen in a few years. As far as I can determine, the last time Queen Elizabeth II wore it was in October 2021, when she inspected members of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery as they took over guard duties at royal residences including her home of Windsor Castle.
Worn by four generations of royal women, its clean crisp natural shape and dazzling diamond composition makes it a favourite within the royal family as well as of the public. The Royal Collection used to sell a paste version of the brooch for 85 pounds ($150).
Royal Brooch Composition
It is a dramatically large brooch (5.5 cm x 5 cm) in the shape of the leaf of a sugar maple (Acer saccharum), Canada’s national tree and a symbol of Canada since the mid 1800s. The brooch’s brilliant- and baguette-cut diamonds are invisibly set into the brooch’s mount.
Creation
The brooch is made by Asprey & Company. The famous jewellery store, founded in 1781, is located on New Bond Street and boasts “articles of exclusive design and high quality.” Queen Victoria gave Asprey its first Royal Warrant in 1862 for dressing cases, travelling bags and writing cases. Since then, the firm has held Royal Warrants for every subsequent monarch.
Provenance
King George VI bought it for his wife, Queen Elizabeth, for their state visit of Canada in 1939, the first by a reigning monarch. For a month on the eve of the Second World War, they travelled from coast to coast by train, stopping at every province in the Dominion of Canada. Huge crowds turned out at every stop to see George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who frequently adorned her outfits with the Maple Leaf brooch.
Official histories of royal jewellery were rather sparse on details of this brooch until The Queen’s Diamonds, an authorized account of diamond jewellery in the royal collection by Hugh Roberts, former director of the Royal Collection, was published in 2012. It included a detailed entry on the Maple Leaf Brooch, which helped clear up the mystery of its creator (previously thought to be made by Cartier).
Though the Asprey provenance is confirmed, there’s a tantalizing story about the brooch’s origins in the family legend of Vancouver jeweller Joe Histed. That tale holds that the brooch was made by his father, William, who then worked for one of Asprey’s jewellery manufacturers, Shire and Olin. In a story recounted in the Vancouver Sun in 2016, Histed explains that his father had made a double-clip brooch, with two maple leafs for the wife of English businessman George Weston. She wore it to a royal garden party. Queen Elizabeth was so enamoured that Mrs. Weston divided it. “The Queen Mother saw it and Mrs. Weston took it apart and gave half of it to her,” Histed told the Sun. “Mrs. Weston had one half and the Queen (Mother) had the other half.”
Worn
After the 1939 tour, Queen Elizabeth didn’t put the brooch away. During the Second World War, she often pinned it to her hats as she toured bombed areas of Britain, and subsequently wore it at many Canada-related events. She kept the brooch in her personal collection until her death in 2002, when it was inherited by her elder daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
It has been loaned to female royals more frequently than any other modern royal brooch. To date, it has been worn by:
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Camilla
Kate, Princess of Wales
The first person to borrow it from its original owner was Elizabeth II when she was still Princess Elizabeth. She wore it on her first trip to Canada in 1951.
The brooch didn’t gather much dust after it was moved into the Queen’s personal collection in 2002 following the death of her mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Since then, Elizabeth II has worn it a few times in Britain, including at Canada House in London in 2008 for a visual memorial of Canadian servicemen killed in the First World War.
In 2009, she loaned it to Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, for her very first trip to Canada. She wore it several times, including on Remembrance Day, nestled alongside a few iconic poppies.
In 2010, the Queen herself took the brooch back to Canada for her 23rd and last trip to her northern realm. Fittingly, she wore it on a red suit on Parliament Hill for Canada Day festivities.
Exactly a year later, the brooch was back on Parliament Hill, pinned to a white dress worn by Kate, Duchess of Cambridge for her first visit to Canada. That evening, she pinned it to a purple dress worn to a Canada Day concert on the Hill. That is believed to be only the second time the brooch has been worn on Canada Day.
In 2016, Queen Elizabeth II again loaned the brooch to Kate for a royal visit to Canada, this time to the West Coast. Kate wore twice, including her first day in Victoria, though, unusually, she fastened it to the right side of her outfits
Elizabeth II continued to wear it at most of the Canadian-related events that she attended in the United Kingdom, including several in 2017 marking the 150th anniversary of Confederation.
She wore it for an official portrait to mark Canada's 150th anniversary, and again on July 19, 2017 when she visited Canada House in London. There, then Governor General David Johnston gave the Queen of Canada a companion to the Maple Leaf brooch: a diamond-and-sapphire Snowflake Brooch (my piece on that brooch is here).
Now, the Maple Leaf Brooch has been pinned to the dress of its third queen, Camilla.