by Sprake:
"Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth." Large portrait of the Queen facing right, set in rectangular border frame of thistles and shamrocks, with two flags below, and castles and cathedrals in each corner. Usually found in calendar form dated 1937 or 1938.
by Godden:
Queen Elizabeth - the youngest daughter of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, the Fourth Earl of Strathmore - was born on 4 August 1900. She married the Duke of York in Westminster Abbey on 26 April 1923.
The Duchess of York became Queen Consort in December 1936, on the abdication of King Edward VIII, and she was crowned, with her husband George VI, on 12 May 1937.
Their first daughter, Princess Elizabeth, born in 1926, succeeded to the British throne in 1952 as Queen Elizabeth II.
This large-size untitled portrait silk issued in 1938, measuring approximately 9 inches by 12 inches, was the last Stevengraph silk known to have been published - making a pair with KING GEORGE VI [so284 on this site], issued in 1937. The young Queen is facing half right, and the composition includes small named views of Glamis Castle, Balmoral Castle, Holyrood House and St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh - one each in the four corners of the frame-like surround.
This silk is normally found mounted in the centre of a hanging wall-calendar of 1938. These calendar-mounted specimens are now rare, for few people, at the time, kept an out-of-date calendar.
However, the silk portrait is also occasionally found mounted on the late dark-card surround, with the credit 'Woven in Silk by Thomas Stevens (Coventry) Ltd.' Such examples may have been remounted silks from the original calendars - for Mr Hill, the former Managing Director of the company, has told me that these portraits were not issued separately for sale but that their use was confined to calendars which were, in the main, presented to the firm's customers.
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