1931 Princess Elizabeth II “Lilibet” Signed Letter Card Drawing Artwork at AGE 5

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

1931 Princess Elizabeth II “Lilibet” Signed Letter Card Drawing Artwork at AGE 5:
$27500.00

For your consideration is an original British Royal Presentation Christmas card dating to circa 1931, personally inscribed and hand-colored by Princess Elizabeth (born 21 April 1926), later Queen Elizabeth II, at approximately five years of age. Executed within the private domestic sphere of the York household, the card bears the intimate inscription in black ink, To Crawfie, from Lilibet. The diminutive Lilibet, derived from her early childhood pronunciation of Elizabeth, was reserved exclusively for immediate family and the closest members of the royal household, rendering its appearance on surviving material of the period exceptionally personal and rarely encountered in the marketplace.

The recipient, Marion Crawford, affectionately known as Crawfie, served as governess to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret and was a formative presence in their upbringing throughout the early 1930s. This presentation therefore predates 11 December 1936, when Elizabeths father, King George VI, ascended the throne, situating the card firmly in the pre-accession years when Elizabeth was not yet heir presumptive. Surviving artifacts from this early, non-sovereign phase of her lifeparticularly those exchanged privately within the householdare markedly scarcer than later royal presentation cards issued during her reign.

Measuring approximately 3.0 x 3.5 inches, the card features an embossed decorative border enclosing a central circular vignette surrounded by ivy motifs. The design has been entirely hand-colored by the young princess in blue, red, and green crayon or pencil. The application of pigment is careful yet unmistakably juvenile, consistent with a child of approximately five years of age, and confirms direct artistic participation rather than later embellishment. The interior left panel retains the blind-embossed continuation of the border; the right panel carries the inscription and signature in a naturally developing childs hand, preserving the immediacy of the moment. Unlike examples featuring printed coloration alone, this piece documents the personal engagement of the future sovereign in the act of decoration itselfan authentic survival of childhood expression.

The importance of this artifact rests in the convergence of defining elements: official royal Christmas presentation format; extreme youth of the signer; use of the private family nickname Lilibet; direct association with Marion Crawford; and demonstrable hand-executed coloring by the future Queen. Juvenile autograph material of Queen Elizabeth II from approximately age five is exceptionally rare; examples combining inscription, private nickname usage, and original child-executed artistic embellishment are rarer still. Within the broader corpus of British royal Christmas cards, this example stands apart as an intimate and early domestic survival from the private childhood of the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

The card remains in excellent original condition, with stable ink, crisp embossing, and sound folds. Provenance is recorded as Clive Farahar and Sophie Dupre. This is a museum-caliber survival of early twentieth-century British royal history, embodying not the formality of monarchy but the formative domestic years of the child who would become Queen Elizabeth II.