Kate Pelham is one of three co-founders of Robinson Pelham, a London bespoke jewellery house established in 1998 by Vanessa Robinson and the sisters Kate and Vivienne Pelham. The firm is a member of the British Antique Dealers' Association in spirit if not formally, draws much of its training from Hatton Garden and the West End trade, and is most widely known to the public for having supplied the bridal earrings worn by Catherine Middleton at her marriage to Prince William in 2011, and again for jewels worn by the Middleton family at subsequent state and ceremonial occasions.

Background and the founding of the house

Robinson Pelham was set up to occupy a specific niche in the London bespoke market: jewellery commissioned directly by the wearer, conceived around a story or stones the client already owned, and executed by independent goldsmiths and stone-setters working to the firm's design briefs. Kate Pelham's role within the partnership has consistently been described in the firm's own communications and in trade interviews as front-of-house design consultation, working closely with clients on the conception of pieces and the selection of stones, while Vivienne Pelham has tended to handle the more technical and gemmological side. The structure mirrors a classical London 'salon' jeweller of the early twentieth century, scaled to a small modern workshop.

The 2011 royal commission

The most widely reported single commission of the firm's history is the pair of diamond earrings, set in white gold, that the Middleton family commissioned from Robinson Pelham for Catherine Middleton to wear at her wedding to Prince William on 29 April 2011. The earrings echoed the lover's knot motif of the borrowed Cartier Halo Tiara and incorporated stylised acorns and oak leaves drawn from the Middleton family arms, recently granted by the College of Arms. The brief was therefore explicitly heraldic, and the firm's discreet handling of an extremely high-profile commission consolidated its reputation in the British market. Subsequent commissions for Pippa Middleton's wedding in 2017 and for various Middleton family members have followed the same approach.

House style

The Robinson Pelham aesthetic blends a recognisable Englishness with a contemporary lightness of touch. The house is fond of botanical motifs (particularly leaves, acorns, ivy and meadow flowers), of mixing white and yellow gold with old-cut diamonds and coloured stones, and of designing pieces around a central stone that the client has inherited or already owns. The 'fauna' collection introduced in the late 2000s, with bee, hummingbird and butterfly motifs in coloured-stone-and-diamond combinations, became something of a signature, and is widely imitated in the British retail trade.

Trade reputation

Within the London trade Robinson Pelham is regarded as a serious bespoke house rather than a fashion brand. The firm publishes relatively little, advertises sparingly, and relies on referral and on the discretion that the British high-net-worth market expects of its jewellers. Kate Pelham's reputation, in turn, rests on the consistency of that consulting role and on the firm's apparent ability to handle commissions that touch on royal and aristocratic provenance without breaching client confidentiality. The royal-wedding commission of 2011 brought a wave of attention but did not, in the firm's own subsequent positioning, change its scale: it remains a small workshop with a London salon address rather than a branded multi-store retailer.

Position within twenty-first-century London bespoke

In the broader picture of the London bespoke trade, Robinson Pelham, alongside Theo Fennell, Stephen Webster, Solange Azagury-Partridge and a handful of others, represents a continuation of the post-war independent tradition that grew up in parallel with the great houses (Cartier London, Garrard, Asprey) and offered a more personal, less branded alternative. Kate Pelham's contribution, as one of three founding partners, has been the cultivation of that client relationship at the design stage. Her name appears less often in the press than the firm's commissions, by deliberate choice, but within the trade it is recognised as a steady presence behind much of what the house has produced over the past two and a half decades.