In 1981, Prince Charles went to Garrard on Regent Street with Lady Diana Spencer to choose an engagement ring. What Garrard showed them was a catalogue. Not a display case of bespoke commissions tailored to the occasion, not a selection of royal-quality pieces prepared in advance of the visit: a printed catalogue of sapphire rings, from which Diana pointed at item number nine.
Item nine was an oval Ceylon sapphire of approximately twelve carats, surrounded by fourteen round brilliant diamonds set in 18-carat white gold. It was a beautiful ring. It was also, in the strictest sense, off the shelf. It cost approximately £28,000. Any member of the public with sufficient funds could have ordered the same ring from the same catalogue. Many have, in the years since.
The ring is now on Catherine, Princess of Wales's left hand. It is one of the most recognisable pieces of jewellery in the world. Its origin as catalogue item nine at a house that had been Crown Jeweller for the previous 138 years is a detail that says something particular about how Garrard operated, and about how British royal jewellery has worked historically: not as the product of extravagant custom commission, but as the product of excellent craft, available at price, which the right person happened to select at the right moment.
In Brief: Garrard was founded in 1735 by George Wickes and appointed Crown Jeweller by Queen Victoria in 1843, a position it held for 164 years. In 1981, Diana Spencer chose her engagement ring from a Garrard catalogue — a twelve-carat Ceylon sapphire cluster at £28,000, available to any buyer. The ring is now on Catherine, Princess of Wales. Garrard still operates on Regent Street and takes bespoke commissions; Wartski of Jermyn Street has been Crown Jeweller since 2007.
George Wickes and the beginning
The business that became Garrard was founded in 1735 by George Wickes, a goldsmith from Bury St Edmunds who had trained in London and established himself on Panton Street, near Haymarket. His early commissions included work for the Prince of Wales, Frederick, eldest son of George II, which provided the royal connection that would sustain and eventually define the house.
Wickes was a skilled goldsmith of the rococo period, producing silverware and gold pieces in the French-influenced decorative style dominant in the 1730s and 1740s. He was admitted to the Goldsmiths' Company and registered his maker's mark. His business passed through several partnerships after his retirement in 1760, moving to Wakelin and Gainsford, then to Robert Garrard and his brothers in 1801.
Robert Garrard gave the house its name. Under his direction, and then under the direction of his nephews, the business consolidated its position at the highest level of British goldsmithing. By 1830, Garrard was producing silverware for the aristocracy and the crown that set the standard for British decorative metalwork in the early Victorian period.
Crown Jeweller
Queen Victoria appointed Garrard as Crown Jeweller in 1843. The appointment meant responsibility for the maintenance, modification, and creation of pieces within the Crown Jewels: the coronation regalia and the working jewellery of the monarch. It was not a ceremonial title. It was a practical one: the Crown Jewels require ongoing care, periodic modification, and occasional significant additions, and Garrard was the house that did this work for 164 years.
The scope of the work was substantial. Garrard was involved in setting major stones into existing pieces, creating new settings for stones moved between different items of regalia, and producing entirely new pieces for specific state occasions. The Imperial Crown of India, made for the 1911 Delhi Durbar (the occasion at which George V was proclaimed Emperor of India), was a Garrard commission. The crown holds over six thousand diamonds and was made in a matter of months. It has been worn once.
For significant stones arriving at the Crown from other sources: gifts, purchases, colonial acquisitions — it was Garrard who determined how they would be set and what pieces they would enter. This gave the house an unusual position: not merely as jewellers but as custodians of a collection that belonged to the Crown but was in some sense also entrusted to Garrard's professional judgment.
The appointment ended in 2007, when Wartski of Jermyn Street was appointed Crown Jeweller. Garrard had held the position for 164 years.
The sapphire ring
The ring Diana chose in 1981 is not the most technically remarkable piece Garrard has made. It is not the largest, or the most expensive, or the most historically significant in terms of the stones it contains.
It is, however, the most looked-at piece of jewellery in the world since Diana wore it, and since it passed to Catherine. The reasons are not purely to do with the ring itself. They have to do with Diana, and with the public relationship with Diana that made everything she wore and said and did into something freighted with meaning it would not otherwise have carried.
What the ring's story adds, specifically, is this: Diana chose it herself. She was shown a catalogue and she pointed at the ring she wanted. This was reported at the time as a slight eccentricity — a catalogue ring for a future Princess of Wales — and dismissed. In retrospect, it reads differently. The choice was an exercise of preference over deference: this one, not whatever you were expecting me to choose. The ring she pointed at was the ring she liked.
The sapphire at its centre is a Ceylon sapphire, from Sri Lanka, the source of the finest blue sapphires outside Kashmir, characterised by a vivid cornflower blue rather than the deeper, sometimes inky blue of Burmese stones. The fourteen surrounding diamonds are round brilliant cuts in white gold claws. The design is formally a cluster ring, the style dominant in British engagement rings from the Victorian period through to the 1980s.
When Diana died in 1997, William and Harry were each offered a piece of her jewellery. Harry chose the sapphire ring. William chose a gold watch. When William decided to propose to Catherine Middleton in 2010 in Kenya, he was carrying the ring with him — he had brought it, in its box, on the trip. He asked Harry if he could use it; Harry agreed. The ring moved from Harry to William to Catherine, and is now one of the most photographed things in any room Catherine enters.
What came after
Garrard continued as a luxury jeweller after the Crown Jeweller appointment moved to Wartski in 2007. The house went through a period of difficulty: ownership changes, repositioning, the challenge of trading on heritage in a market where heritage is both an asset and a constraint. It relaunched with a focus on fine jewellery collections that drew on its archival design language: the flower, the leaf, the simple geometric forms that had been in production since the nineteenth century.
The current house is smaller and differently positioned than the 1843-to-2007 Garrard that held the Crown Jeweller appointment. It is still on Regent Street. It still makes fine jewellery. It still takes commissions for significant one-off pieces. It no longer maintains the Crown Jewels.
The sapphire cluster ring Diana chose remains the most requested reference point when clients commission engagement rings from Garrard today. The house produces its own version of the style. Ceylon sapphires of the quality at its centre now cost considerably more than £28,000; for buyers researching sapphire engagement rings more broadly, the sapphire buying guide covers what to look for in the stone itself.
The business George Wickes started on Panton Street in 1735 is still operating. That is, by any measure, a remarkable thing. Very few businesses of any kind survive three centuries. Almost none survive three centuries in the same trade, serving successively the Georgian aristocracy, the Victorian court, the twentieth-century monarchy, and the contemporary luxury market, with sufficient continuity that the thread from Wickes to the current house can be traced without interruption. Cartier, the only contemporary house at the same tier with a comparable continuity claim, started 112 years later.
The catalogue item nine probably accounts for a meaningful proportion of why people still know the name.
The ring and the house
The Diana ring belongs to the Royal Collection now, technically; it was one of Diana's personal pieces, and on her death it passed to her estate, and through her estate to Harry, and from Harry to William, and it is now Catherine's. Garrard made it, sold it, and has no further claim on it.
What the house has is the association, which is worth considerably more to a jewellery brand than any royalty arrangement could provide. Garrard made the ring. The ring is on the Princess of Wales. That sentence, in the jewellery business, is approximately as good as it gets.
The catalogue in which the ring appeared as item nine is no longer in print.
Frequently asked questions
When was Garrard founded?
The business that became Garrard was founded in 1735 by George Wickes, a goldsmith from Bury St Edmunds, on Panton Street in London. The name Garrard dates to 1801, when Robert Garrard took control of the business. Garrard is considered the oldest jewellery house in the world in continuous operation.
When was Garrard appointed Crown Jeweller?
Garrard was appointed Crown Jeweller by Queen Victoria in 1843. The appointment gave the house responsibility for the maintenance, modification, and creation of pieces within the Crown Jewels. Garrard held the appointment for 164 years, until 2007, when Wartski of Jermyn Street was appointed Crown Jeweller.
Did Garrard make Princess Diana's engagement ring?
Yes. In 1981, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer visited Garrard on Regent Street and were shown a catalogue of sapphire rings. Diana chose the ring that became her engagement ring — an oval Ceylon sapphire of approximately twelve carats surrounded by fourteen round brilliant diamonds in 18-carat white gold, then priced at approximately £28,000. The ring is now worn by Catherine, Princess of Wales.
Where is Princess Diana's engagement ring now?
Princess Diana's sapphire engagement ring is now worn by Catherine, Princess of Wales, who received it when Prince William proposed in 2010. After Diana's death in 1997, the ring was chosen by Prince Harry from her estate; Harry agreed to pass it to William when William decided to propose with it.
Is Garrard still operating?
Yes. Garrard continues to operate as a luxury jewellery house on Regent Street, London. Following the end of its Crown Jeweller appointment in 2007, the house repositioned as a contemporary fine jeweller drawing on its archival design heritage. It continues to accept bespoke commissions and produce fine jewellery collections.
Sources: Geoffrey Munn, Garrard: The Crown Jewellers (Garrard, 2007); Royal Collection Trust documentation on the Wales sapphire ring; Goldsmiths' Company records on George Wickes; contemporary reporting on the 1981 engagement; Wartski appointment as Crown Jeweller, 2007.
