Will and Kate’s Canadian bling

YELLOWKNIFE – Diamonds are a duchesses’ – and a duke’s – best friend.
And here in the gateway to the Arctic, Canadian diamonds dazzled the Duchess of Cambridge, as the Northwest Territories gave her and her husband a gift of some of the best quality diamonds in the world, all mined locally.
William was given a pair of cufflinks of platinum and pave-set diamonds. Kate was given a brooch. Both the cufflinks and the brooch are in a polar bear design that is the emblem of the NWT.
The chairman of mining giant Harry Winston said the gift is meant to represent the culture of the region with an understated yet intricate design.
“What we have attempted to do here is to stay away from using large, prominent diamonds, but instead to use something that is of intricate design that reflects the sort of design you see in the beadwork and the craftsmanship in the northwest Territory, so it is very much a gift that focuses on that,” said Harry Winston Chairman and CEO Robert Gannicott.
It took 250 man hours to create the two intricate pieces of jewelry.
There are more than 692 diamonds between the two pieces – 302 in the brooch given to the duchess and 390 in the cufflinks. The brooch stones are bigger than the ones in the duke’s cufflinks.
Gannicott refused to speculate on what the two sparkling pieces of bling are worth.
“It’s priceless, obviously, it’s priceless,” he laughed.
Kate told Gannicott that she liked the idea of the design and the smaller diamonds and the fact that the setting represented the beading commonly used on native clothing and shoes.