Elizabeth Taylor’s Crown Jewels: A look at her glittering personal collection

Think Elizabeth Taylor: you will probably conjure up in your mind the image of the quintessential diva, who shines with jewels with a glamor without measure. Accumulated over decades spent in Hollywood (and a string of ex-husbands), the Taylor’s extraordinary private jewelry collection boasts tiaras glittering and emeralds Bulgarians if possible even more sparkling.

Taylor once said, “You can’t cry on the shoulder of a diamond and diamonds won’t keep you warm at night, but they sure are fun when the sun is shining.” Auctioned at her request after her disappearance in 2011, the treasure of him collected over £140 million then destined for charity. Here’s a sneak peek at her extraordinarily extravagant jewelry box…

The Mike Todd tiara

Gift of third husband of Taylor, film producer Mike Todd, was an antique diamond tiara with nine round brilliant stones set in a diamond pattern fleur-de-lis. The actress wore the tiara at the 1957 Academy Awards, where her husband won Best Picture for Around the world in 80 days. Less than a year later, Todd died in a plane crash, but Taylor kept the sentimentally valuable tiara until it was sold at Christie’s for over $4 million, sixty times its estimate.

Bulgarian emeralds

Elizabeth Taylor remarried for the fourth time to a family friend Eddie Fisher in May 1959 and immediately went with him to Bulgari. The gift he gave her was a diamond brooch en tremblant and floral-set emeralds that Taylor also wore as a hair ornament. When did the filming of Cleopatra in 1960, Taylor met Richard Burton, whom she would later marry twice. Burton declared that «the only word Elizabeth knows in Italian is Bulgari», and immediately replaced the Fisher brooch with an 18-carat Colombian emerald surrounded by 12 set diamondswhich Taylor wore as a brooch on their first wedding day in 1964. Later, she added a matching necklace of 16 emeraldsto which the brooch was combined as a detachable pendant.

The pearl «la Peregrina»

Another gift from Burton was a necklace with the legendary natural pearl known as “La Peregrina”, which means “Wanderer”. Once called “the most perfect pearl in the world,” it was found 500 years ago off the coast of Panama and reportedly gifted to the Spanish royal family. Lost to the French during the Napoleonic wars, the pearl was sold to British nobility during Bonaparte’s exile. Burton bought the pearl for $37,000 at Sotheby’s in 1969, and Taylor commissioned Cartier to re-set the legendary jewel at the end of a necklace of rubies, diamonds and cultured pearls, which it later sold for 11 $.8 million at Christie’s.

The Taylor-Burton diamond

In 1969, a pear-shaped diamond of 69.42 carats it was auctioned off in New York. A bidding war ensued between Cartier, Richard Burton and Aristotle Onassis. Although Cartier won with a bid of just over $1 million, Burton simply went to Cartier the next day and purchased the diamond for his wife, who had the new Taylor-Burton diamond re-set in a necklace and wore it at the 1970 Academy Awards to present the Best Picture award to the cast of Midnight Cowboy. The diamond was sold after their second divorce in 1976.

There set Daisy by Van Cleef & Arpels

Taylor was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 65th Academy Awards in 1993 for her work as an AIDS activist. To accompany her lemon-yellow dress by Valentino, she borrowed the “Reine Margeurite” necklace by Van Cleef & Arpels, with yellow and white diamonds and chrysoprase leaves. Naturally, she then bought it for herself.