Decorative Items and China
Diana's Dresses
Dolls


Decorative Items and China

Several Halcyon Days boxes were authorized by the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. Cameron & Smith bills itself as the "world's largest dealer" in retired Halcyon Days boxes. Some of the items shown are not currently in stock, but they have an excellent search service. Click on the heading Royalty, and their current offerings include boxes issued for the 1981 and 1999 royal weddings, a presentation box for Prince Charles' visit to Poland, limited edition boxes for state visits to the Caribbean and Italy, Golden Jubilee boxes, and Queen Mother commemoratives.  McCants Enamels has a number of Halcyon Days boxes in stock:  two of the limited edition memorial boxes from 1997, two 1981 royal wedding boxes, Prince William birthday boxes dating from his childhood, 18th, and 21st birthdays,  Prince Henry birthday boxes for his birth and 21st birthday, limited edition wedding boxes for the Yorks, Wessexes, and Cornwalls, and a number of boxes for the Queen and the Queen Mother.

The Boehm Princess Diana Memorial rose is # 1222 on the list of the gift shop at the American Camellia Society. If you are a member, the price is $292.50, while non-members pay $325.00.

The Diana: Heaven's Rose figure was issued by Seraphim Classics as part of their Angels of Inspiration series in 1998, in honor of Princess Diana, at a list price of $59.50. The figure was retired in 2000, so many of the dealers who still have it in stock are charging at least $50 or more for it. Though the previous dealer I had listed who was only charging $8.00 no longer has it in stock, Collect.com can provide it for an increased price of $29.24, if you want it.
Edwards China stocks a number of royal commemoratives that are hard to find elsewhere. They still have a couple of high-end Aynsley and Royal Crown Derby commemoratives of Charles and Camilla's wedding. Of particular interest to Diana collectors, however, is the Stuart crystal votive bowl, one of the earliest memorial fund products, which can be purchased for 23.57 pounds.

Compton Woodhouse is a treasure house of royal commemoratives. They have a number of Diana plates (including a 2006 calendar plate and a ribbon plate), the Coalport Diana figurines Our English Rose, Queen of People's Hearts, Jewel in the Crown, Diana at Home, and Forever in Our Hearts, the Coalport bridal figurines of the Queen Mother, Queen Alexandra, Princess Anne, Princess Margaret, Sarah, the Duchess of York, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, the Duchess of Kent, and Princess Diana, a Coalport figurine of Queen Mary, a Coalport 80th birthday figurine of Queen Elizabeth II, two Queen Elizabeth 80th birthday plates (one a ribbon plate), a  beautiful  Spode charger for Charles 's last wedding,  a "Happy and Glorious" limited-edition bear  from Merrythought in  commemoration of the Queen's 80th birthday, a Queen Elizabeth 80th birthday commemorative bear wearing a triple strand string of pearls, an 80th birthday bear decked out for Trooping the Color, a Waterford Queen Elizabeth II 80th Birthday crystal bowl, a Wedgwood Queen Elizabeth II Jasper clock limited to 1926 pieces (it is mispelled Wedwood on the site), Royal Worcester figurines of Queen Elizabeth II at her Coronation, Princess Margaret at the Coronation, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, and Queen Anne, and a Princess Diana Musical Snow Globe, created in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of her wedding day, showing her in her gown. (It's under the What's New section, which pops up when you move the cursor over Special Offers.)

Trocadero Popular Collectibles is a search engine for a number of antique dealers, and its section on Royal Memorabilia offers over one hundred items for Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George V and VI, Elizabeth II, and some commemoratives for the 1981 Royal Wedding.
The prices aren't cheap, but the quality of the items are first-rate.

Ryker Studios has a ceramic figurine showing Diana in the Travolta dress which can be purchased unfinished for $12, or painted for $42.

To find the 102 royal thimbles at Cottage Thimbles, first click on the flag of the country you live in, then Main Index, then Cottage Thimbles, then Royal Family, which has galleries labelled Royal Family 1 through 10,  Royal Family Additions,  Queen's children, and Royal Ladies. Twenty-five of the thimbles are of Diana, Charles, and/or her children, and the rest portray various other members of the royal family. Each one is priced at $2.75. Another area to look in on from the Main Index of this site is Carol Ann Pewter, then Index, then Royal Family, where you will find pewter thimbles for the fiftieth anniversary of the Queen's Coronation, the Crown, a Golden Carriage, Henry VIII, two Queen Mother thimbles (one a statuette), and a Diana statuette thimble, all priced at $19.95.

If you want to see an example of a royal who makes a successful living from his own efforts, visit David Linley. He is Prince Margaret's son and has been working as a cabinetmaker for a number of years, with a line of beautiful, though very expensive, furniture and accessories. Most of the furniture has to be seen at the shop on 60 Pimlico Road, but you can order
lamps, candlesticks, picture frames, boxes, bowls, candlesticks, trays, doorstops, coasters, shoe-cleaning kits, and desk accessories from the site.


The Balmoral Castle gift shop was the first of the Queen's gift shops to go online year round. Click on Balmoral Online Shop to go to the Gift Shop, where wares include leather goods, stationary, Balmoral label whiskey, guide books and videos for both Sandringham and Balmoral, several different ranges of pretty linen patterns, several china patterns (including reproductions of Queen Victoria's and Queen Charlotte's china), Christmas tree decorations, picnic equipment, golfing accessories, jigsaw puzzles, children's books and gifts, pet gifts, an exclusive teddy bear, cufflinks, jewelry, and royal commemoratives. (They have a wider selection of commememoratives from last year's royal wedding than the Royal Collection has, but none of these has been reduced in price. Maybe when William and Kate get hitched, they will finally knock down the price to make way for stock of a wedding we all want to buy souvenirs for.) You can also
rent cottages for a week at a time, though not when the Queen is in residence, by clicking on Holiday Cottages to get details and pictures of the available cottages, then clicking on Cottage Availability to check for open dates, then by calling the Estate Office phone number to place your booking. Prices vary by season and facility booked. You can also find out about how to make arrangements for such activities as Guided Walks, Pony Trekking, Salmon Fishing, and Landrover Safaris, as well as just visiting the estate.

Although the main gift shop at Windsor Castle is not online, two of its smaller shops are. According the documentary, Windsor Castle: A Royal Year that aired this past year and is available on DVD, the shop of St. George's Chapel had a major overhaul to make it more interesting to visitors, and evidently part of that campaign involved putting the shop online. Though they offer only a very limited number of items compared to the shop itself, which I visited in March of this year, it has some interesting music CDs for sale,  including several collections of organ music and one of Christmas carols. It also has some lovely and moderately priced watercolor prints and Christmas cards of the castle, as well as guidebooks of the chapel. They do ship all over the world. The Windsor Farm Shop, regrettably, is limited to the UK and Ireland, because of the nature of its goods, which are food and produce that would be subject to customs restrictions of any other country. But it is a lovely site to browse: just don't look at the list if you're at all hungry! Dairy products and baked goods can only be ordered if you live within five miles of the Castle and can get it on home delivery, and fruits and vegetables can't be ordered online at all because the stock is dependent on what local farmers supply. The Farm Shop also has a coffee shop that sells coffee, teas, sandwiches, soup, cakes, and pastries, but don't figure on eating there if you're on a day trip to Windsor because it is several miles from the Castle, unless you've driven in your own car. And don't even think about taking a bus full of tourists there because they state on their web site that they are "unable to cater for large parties or coaches".

Peter Jones China has sold a large number of high-quality and exquisite Royal Commemoratives over the years. Items currently are in stock under the following categories of royal commemoratives: Tributes to Three Gracious Ladies (The Queen, The Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret), the Queen, the Queen Mother; Prince William's 21st birthday, Prince Harry's 18th birthday, Prince Edward's 40th birthday, and the Queen's 80th birthday. There are also such commemoratives for the birth of the Wessex's first child, and the engagement and marriage of the Cornwalls. And under Diana, there is a darling, limited edition Steiff bear for 155 pounds, which can be paid in five installements of 31.00 pounds each. It will be available in November 2006 just in time for Christmas.


Diana's Dresses
The big event this year is the exhibition at Kensington Palace of photographs taken of Diana by Mario Testino a couple of months before she died in order to appear in a July 1997 Vanity Fair story about the auction of her dresses. The exhibit features photos which were not published in the magazine, and are coupled with nine gowns sold at the auction, four of which were worn during the photo shoot. The exhibit runs till an unspecified date of the summer of 2007. While it is possible to buy the book of photos at many places, as far as I know, the only place you can buy the other items created for the exhibit are at the Palace gift shop, which fortunately is online. Make sure you click on to the next page of the Desk Accessories in order to see everything, since three items are on the first page (the address book, the note card collection. and the jotter pad), while the last  two  are on the next page (the  stationary box, which features both writing paper and notecards, and the journal).

When I visited London in March 2006, the white "Elvis" dress and jacket, previously owned by Franklin Mint, was on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in its Fashion Gallery, Room # 40, as a new acquisition which had been donated by them. There was no indication of how long it would be on display, and no information about it on the web site for the museum.


Diana: a Celebration is back at Althorp for the summer, with no information about where it will be this winter, but you can check out the site and purchase goods from its new online store. The exhibition catalog is a must, and there are some exceptionally beautiful china commemoratives and a postcard pack.

A Princess Costume Tea Party is the name of an exhibit which was held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1998 to benefit the Association for the Support of Children with Cancer, and it featured five of the Christie's Auction dresses, one of which had been purchased by a local socialite. Each gown on the initial page has its own information page, which you can access by clicking on the picture of the gown on the home page.


For Erin: a Royal Remembrance is a page for an exhibit of one of Diana's dresses that was displayed at Kent State University in Ohio from September 1998-September 1999 in memory of a young girl who died of a brain tumor. The girl's story is touching, and the fact that the woman who bought the dress as a means of honoring her memory and helping Diana's causes is also moving, since one has the feeling that the purchaser was not a wealthy person.

Diana's Working Wardrobe on Display is an account of the Catherine Walker exhibit that was at Kensington Palace in the fall of 2001 and the first few months of 2002. Aside from describing the dresses, it gives details about how they were constructed (including the fact that they had underwear built in), and some interesting information about the designer herself, including the fact that she never talks about the dress that Diana was buried in.

Four of Diana's dresses were displayed as part of a larger exhibition titled Royalty and Elegance: Selections from the Pat Kerr Collection at the Tennessee State Museum in the fall of 2002. Although the exhibit has closed, it may still be possible to order copies of the exhibit catalog from the museum gift shop at 1-800-407-4324; ask for museum shop personnel. The catalog is 56 pages and costs $10.00. (Jimmy from Tennessee saw this exhibit and told me he didn't think it was worth getting the catalog. He also told me that the dresses were not in cases and there were no alarms, so anyone could have touched them. That seemed very odd to me, since everywhere else Diana's gowns have been displayed, they are either in cases or behind barriers which would have prevented anyone from getting close to them.) Other items in this exhibit belonged to Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Marilyn Monroe. It is also possible there may be footage of the gowns in a film that was made in conjunction with this exhibit titled: Pat Kerr: Wrapped in Royalty (2002). This twelve minute documentary is available for $19.50 at The Documentary Channel store.

Princess Diana's Klondike Dress is the lovingly researched story of the 1890s dress which Princess Diana wore in Edmonton, Alberta at barbecue where everyone wore period costume. The profile is written by the owner of the dress, Dr. Michael Smith, who gives all details of its orginal design and construction, how she happened to choose it, the books which contain pictures of it, a photo of a doll that was made wearing this dress, and an extensive listing of all the books in which pictures of the dress appear. And according to the website, the dress is currently on display at the University of Alberta's Clothing and Textiles Collection in Edmonton, Alberta for an "indefinite" period of time.

The  Pink Ribbons Crusade wound up their latest tour in Carthage, Missouri in December 2004, but they do not yet indicate on their site when or where their next tour will be. Under the tour information section, they invite readers to check back periodically to the site for details about the next stop, or if you would like to work with them to bring the exhibit to your town, to contact them.  The gift shop is open and with one or two exceptions, everything is exclusive to their site. Items include two mugs (one of which is the watercolor of Diana in her bridal gown), the exclusive Precious Moments princess figurine titled, "Your Love Reigns Forever in My Heart", a limited edition print of a painting done of Diana in her wedding gown during her lifetime, a silk scarf, two CDs, a music box, a reverse painted perfume bottle, a set of pillowcases, bridge cards, a Crees and Coe doll, a teddy bear, a t-shirt displaying five of the six gowns, a friendship ball, a mouse pad, and a set of postcards.

Fashion Era has a nice article on Diana 1980-90's Fashion Icon, which charts the evolution of her style and lingers nostalgically over her fairy-tale princess look of the early 80s.

Remembering Princess Diana: Her Fashion Legacy appeared after the Diana's Dresses documentary that was on Cinemax several years ago, and profiles some of the individual owners of the dresses sold at the Christie's auction.

Finally, all the dresses from the Christie's auction catalog are at Diana's Dress Auction, which has taken great care to put up excellent photos of every dress sold at the auction and give thorough details about their history, including names of current owners. The site has a calendar, and some great Diana doll pages. There is a link to their discussion group at Yahoo, and they welcome new members who want to discuss Diana's fashions and books about her.



Dolls
An absolute must for Princess Diana doll collectors is Dolls in the Image of Diana, Princess of Wales, which has been around since 1999, is an encyclopedic compilation of information on virtually every Diana doll manufactured, and has good links to other Diana doll sites not mentioned on this page. (My favorite section is The Ugh Gallery, found under "Curiosi-Dis", which rightfully opens fire at the most ugly ones ever made.) And if you're feeling lonesome to talk to others who also have lots of Diana dolls sitting around their living rooms, join her group for Princess Diana Doll Collectors at Yahoo. (If you're not already a member of Yahoo, you'll need to sign up with them, but it doesn't cost anything to join.) They have over 277 members and you can usually find people there almost every day. And some of those members have produced lovely outfits for the Franklin Mint vinyl dolls. You should also check out her ebay Guide to Diana, Princess of Wales Dolls.

Leslie's Lovies is a site about various Diana dolls and other Diana doll sites which has been compiled by a long-time visitor to this site.(Leslie is also the owner of the Princess Diana Tributes and Collector's Web Ring, of which this site is a member.) This site is memorable for the beautiful repainting jobs she has done on many of the dolls in her collection, which in my opinion are much better than most of the Diana dolls that have ever been made. (I am particularly fond of her repainted Effanbee Diana bridal doll.)

Lisa's Princess Diana Doll Collection is the site of an individual collector which I thought you would love to see because of the great photos of all of her Diana dolls, some in custom-made outfits. There is also a link to favorite sites. If you click on either Fashions or Accessories, you will notice that she sells some really good-looking doll clothes, but I don't know if any of them would fit any of the Diana dolls.

Dream Dolls Gallery has the first doll in the Ashton-Drake series of Princess Diana dolls, which is wearing the blue velvet gown she wore when she danced at the White House with John Travolta, for a rock-bottom price of $49.99. It doesn't say how many they have in stock, but at those prices, they should sell out soon.

Most of the paper dolls collections are out of print, though the two books by Tom Tierney are still available from the superstores. However, a couple of sets are available online: Diana, Princess of Wales, which is just one of many paper doll sets offered by artist Donald Hendricks at his site, Paper Dolls: the Cutting Edge. The set has two pages, is signed by the artist which has the doll and several outfits, and is priced at $12.00. There is also a second set from this artist, which is titled Lady Di.  And if you click on the Dress the Dolls at the bottom of the page, you can click on Diana, or any of the other dolls on the list, and then proceed to dress them by clicking on the outfit.
A more traditional paper doll set for those of you who love them can be found at Gail's Princess Diana Paper Doll, where you will find a doll and twelve outfits! The outfits have tabs for ease of dressing the doll after you print and cut everything out.

An extremely limited number of three of the Street Players dolls in the white formal and four in the black formal are available for $60 apiece from Donna's Korner Kollectibles. Prices are good through September 30, 2006.

The Pink Ribbons Crusade has made an arrangement to sell an exclusive limited edition doll (300) made by Paul Crees to benefit their charity, and the price is $295.

One of the rarest Princess Diana dolls is the Princess Diana porcelain doll by Darlyne Davis, of which only ten were made, that you can get for $275.


Doll Sale Closeouts has the Gwen MacNeil Green Velvet doll for $275.

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 denisem4@mail2princess.com                                         Copyright 1999-2006
Officially launched July 1, 1999                                       Updated August 20, 2006