News From Other Pelhams: A Touch of Bling

This may come as a surprise, but there are other places named Pelham in this world.

For example: Pelham, Massachusetts. Pelham, New Hampshire. Pelham, Alabama.

You may be of the opinion that we live in the best of all possible Pelhams, but your intrepid About Town columnist feels obligated to keep track of the other Pelhams and from time to time bring you news from these exotic places.

My first dispatch involves not a place but a company that has been in the news lately.

Robinson Pelham, a jeweler in the Pimlico section of London, designed a set of diamond earrings for a recent wedding. You may have heard about it. You may have gotten up before dawn to watch it, along with one-third of humanity.

When Kate Middleton emerged from the back of a Rolls-Royce at Westminster Abbey, everyone’s attention was focused on the elegant Sarah Burton wedding dress, which seems to have met with near-universal approval.

In the days since the wedding of Prince William and the newly titled Duchess of Cambridge, however, the bling patrol has focused on those sparklers that were dangling from Kate’s ear lobes.

The official royal wedding website describes the earrings as “diamond-set stylized oak leaves with a pear-shape diamond-set drop and a pavé-set diamond acorn suspended in the centre.”

The keyword here is diamond.

Robinson Pelham’s design was reportedly inspired by the Middleton family’s new coat of arms, which features oak leaves and acorns, and was intended to echo the 1936 halo tiara that Queen Elizabeth lent to Kate for the occasion.

The custom jeweler also designed a set of diamond drop earrings for Kate’s younger sister, Pippa. To match her headpiece, the design of Pippa’s earrings was floral instead of arboreal, with petals rather than oak leaves.

Both sets of earrings were gifts from their parents, Michael and Carole Middleton.

But wait, as the infomercials say, there’s more.

Robinson Pelham, which draws part of its name from one of the founders, Kate Pelham Burn, also designed a tourmaline and diamond pendant and matching earrings for Carole.

Michael and James, Kate’s brother, wore gold stick pins from the jeweler, one decorated with an oak leaf and the other with—you’ve already guessed, haven’t you?—an acorn.

A spokesperson for the jeweler, whose clientele includes British society figures and people from the worlds of film and the arts, refused to answer the oh-so-tacky but oh-so-interesting question of how much money Kate’s parents had to extract from their rather deep pockets to pay for her baubles.

But the Daily Mirror, a London newspaper, reported that the earrings cost 15,000 pounds, or nearly $25,000. Another newspaper, the Daily Mail, says that Robinson Pelham’s business has boomed since the wedding.

Buckingham Palace announced last week that the royal newlyweds have decided to add a visit to California in July at the end of their tour of Canada. No word yet on whether the earrings will also make the trip.