For more than a decade, Prince William has spoken out vehemently against the use of ivory, calling it “a symbol of destruction, not of luxury”. The royal patron of the anti-ivory charity Tusk has lobbied leaders in China, the US and countries across Africa.
He has even said that he wants to destroy all the ivory owned by the royals. In 2019, a spokesperson for William clarified that while destroying all the ivory in the royal collection was beyond the prince’s control, he had “ensured there is no ivory from the collection at Kensington Palace”, his place of residence.
However, the Guardian has discovered that nine items containing ivory have been displayed at Kensington Palace since the beginning of the year. Each of them were displayed not far from Apartment 1a, the official London residence of Prince William and his family.
The ivory on show at the palace includes a ring with a miniature portrait of George III painted onto ivory, a desk made partly of ivory and Queen Victoria’s ivory quill. A Kensington Palace exhibition earlier this year included six miniature portraits, delicately painted on to thin sheets of ivory, which was used regularly in the 18th century due to it luminosity.
All of the items except for the ivory quill, which is privately owned by King Charles, are among a total of 1,849 ivory pieces discovered by the Guardian in a catalogue of the royal collection, an enormous trove of national heritage held in the “right of the crown”. Among the many ivory pieces are carved thrones, Fabergé ornaments, armchairs and elephants.
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Cost of the crown is an investigation into royal wealth and finances. The series, published ahead of the coronation of King Charles III, is seeking to overcome centuries of secrecy to better understand how the royal family is funded, the extent to which individual members have profited from their public roles, and the dubious origins of some of their wealth. The Guardian believes it is in the public interest to clarify what can legitimately be called private wealth, what belongs to the British people, and what, as so often is the case, straddles the two.
In 2016, at an event organised by the conservation charity Tusk, William stood at the podium before a crowd of campaigners and policymakers and explained that if the rate of ivory poaching continued, by the time his daughter, Princess Charlotte, was 25, “the African elephant will be gone from the wild”.
Two of the seven portraits on ivory displayed at Kensington Palace earlier this year were of another Princess Charlotte of Wales: the daughter of King George IV.
Prince William’s father, King Charles, who is the patron of the royal collection, has also spoken out against the use of ivory. In a speech in 2014, with William by his side, Charles described how the illegal wildlife trade had “reached such unprecedented levels of killing and violence that it now poses a grave threat, not only to the survival of some of the world’s most treasured species but also to economic and political stability in many areas around the world”.
This raises the question of why the king, too, has ivory at his home; in this case, a snuff bottle with an ivory handle. It is kept in the library of his palatial London residence, Clarence House.
There are 23 ivory items on display in the ballroom in Sandringham House, the king’s privately owned residence in Norfolk. A tour guide told visitors that these items were Charles’s private property.
Buckingham Palace declined to respond questions about the ivory on display in royal properties, saying that for “operational reasons” it would not have the capacity to answer such queries until after the king’s coronation next month.
Unlike William, the king has not gone so far as to suggest the ivory in the royal collection should be destroyed, with one palace insider reportedly saying Charles viewed his son’s comments on the matter as “naive”.
A Guardian analysis of the royal collection identified 126 items on show in 24 palaces and museums around the UK and abroad.
They include a pair of carved leopards looted by British forces from the kingdom of Benin in 1897 and presented to Queen Victoria. The statues are on long-term loan from the royal collection to the British Museum and are exhibited alongside the controversial Benin bronzes, which were captured by the British forces at the same time.
Elsewhere, a model Indian temple made, in part, of ivory is on loan to a museum in Ontario, Canada.
Opinion is divided over how art custodians should handle legacy collections of ivory. Tusk said as long as galleries and museums were “in no way glamourising the ivory trade” it was highly unlikely their displays would fuel extra demand. But Dr Mark Jones, the head of policy at the conservation charity Born Free, said ivory items should be exhibited only in exceptional circumstances and that care should be taken when they were.
“We would urge museums and galleries to provide information to their visitors on the detrimental impacts the demand for elephant ivory has had on the conservation of elephants and the welfare of individual animals, alongside any historical information, in order to discourage further demand for ivory products,” Jones said.
While the royal collection’s online catalogue logs items made of ivory, there is no mention on the website of any concerns or controversies surrounding the material. And there is no such information accompanying the public displays of ivory at royal palaces or residences, including Windsor Castle.
Close to half a million people visited the castle in 2021-22, taking in the treasures inside. Those included 12 items made of ivory, the most striking of which is the elaborately carved ivory throne, which takes pride of place in the Garter Throne Room. There is no information about the animal cruelty that created it on show anywhere in the palace.
William’s 2019 commitment to ensuring no ivory would be on display at Kensington Palace was made to the former Lib Dem MP Norman Baker, the author of a book on the royals. “I was given the clear indication that William found these ivory items distasteful and as soon as he was in a position to do so they would be disposed of,” he said. “I’m perplexed that they haven’t been.”
With respect to the king’s personal ownership of ivory, Baker said: “If you make statements saying that you don’t want ivory and then he has ivory in his own collection, that’s the definition of hypocrisy.”
A spokesperson for the Royal Collection Trust said “it is to be expected” that a collection of its size would include ivory but that, in keeping with international regulations, no modern ivory was used in the conservation of those works.
They added: “Works of art in the official royal residences (including Windsor Castle) and historic royal palaces (including Kensington Palace) are not generally labelled as they are displayed as part of historic interiors, rather than a museum display.”
Visitors wanting more information, the spokesperson said, could visit the collection’s website, consult an onsite guidebook or speak to a warden.
