Coining Queen Elizabeth’s Tiaras

 

She acquired about 50. Some she inherited from her mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Others were gifts. Yet others she had made to order. 

Just four from her extensive collection have appeared on coins of Britain and the British Commonwealth in the course of her reign. Three of these were worn by the queen herself. These are “Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara”, “George IV State Diadem”, and “Kokoshnik Tiara”. Her mother wore the fourth, “The Greville Tiara”. There may also be a fifth, that sported by Queen Victoria in 2001. 

Each holds a piece of royal history. Each has its own story. Representative coins on which each occurs, make a small but exclusive thematic collection. 

 

Laurel Wreath

Queen Elizabeth was fifteen years into her reign before any British coins showed her wearing a tiara. On her first issues sculptor Mary Gillick chose to portray a simple laureated bust of the new monarch. In this respect Her Majesty’s coin portrait echoed those of George I through George IV. In contrast her father, grandfather and great-grandfather had been shown bare-headed on Britain’s coins.

Gillick’s effigy would be the sole portrait of Her Majesty used for Great Britain’s pre-decimal coinage from 1953-on, as it would for the pre-decimal coins of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Rhodesia & Nyasaland.

 

Girls of great Britain and Ireland

A new effigy was called for when a new decimal coinage was introduced in Britain in 1968. That chosen was by Arnold Machin. The portrait of the young Queen shows her indisputably regal and wearing “The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara”. This same portrait had already accompanied decimalization of the coinage of Australia in 1966 and New Zealand in 1967. 

This tiara is the Queen’s favourite…