The interesting discovery was made by Australian art historian Michael Reed when he was researching the famous Blakiston-Bowes Cabinet. Side-note: the Duke and Duchess will visit the cabinet on their tour of New York this week.
Now, back to that cabinet. It was made as an extravagent, be-crested, wedding gift to celebrate the union between two big families in the Durham county in the UK, the Blakistons and the Bowes-Lyons.
Now here’s the interesting part, the connection between the Queen mother and the Duchess. The pair share an ancestor in Sir William Blakiston, whose great-grand-daughter married into the Bowes-Lyon family, from which the Queen mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, descends.
As Michael Reed noted, this connection might be behind why the Duchess wore a tiara owned by the Queen Mother during her 2011 marriage to Prince William, and her offical entrance into the Royal Family.
“It makes sense that Kate wore the Queen Mother’s tiara when she married Prince William – both women share a great deal, Durham ancestry, the vast Gibside Estate and the same famous cabinet,” Reed said in a statement.
