Duchess of Argyll tiara
The Telegraph, 18 June 2012
Airport sells off Duchess's lost diamond tiara
The Duchess of Argyll, who lost five pieces of jewellery including a diamond tiara at Glasgow Airport, spotted one of them in an auction catalogue after BAA sold it off, it was reported. The Duchess lost a Victorian headpiece and a Cartier brooch along with three other pieces worth a total of £100,000 in 2006.
The items went missing as she returned to Clan Campbell's ancestral home, Inveraray Castle. Despite reporting the loss to the police and informing the Art Loss Register (ALR), they could not be traced until the Duchess, 68, saw her missing brooch in a Scottish auction house catalogue.
After the ALR investigated, it emerged the airport's owner, BAA, had found the jewellery just months after it went missing and sold it to a diamond merchant for less than £5,000. The proceeds were given to charity. "Apparently, the airport found the jewels or they were turned in to 'lost and found' by someone. They didn't call the police even though the airport police had a record of the theft. They didn't call ALR. The only thing they did was sell them."
The tiara, brooch and a pearl necklace will be returned to the Duchess but an emerald ring and pearl earrings are still missing.
"I'm absolutely amazed. I thought that after six years I'd lost them forever," the Duchess said. "The tiara was a Victorian family one and the necklace was given to me for my 21st birthday. So everything was very special."
the punchline (no laughing!): A BAA spokesman said the authority would be reviewing its procedures.
v The Duchess of Argyll; two diamond tiaras
1. The Duchess wearing the lost and now retrieved tiara (with Cartier brooch?)
2. The Duchess wearing another diamond tiara
[The Duchess, née Eleanor Cadbury, is a scion of the Cadbury chocolate dynasty]
thumbnail images cropped from larger photographs