Few private collectors of the twentieth century did more to shape public appetite for important coloured stones and historical diamonds than Dame Elizabeth Taylor (1932 to 2011). Her collection was not assembled merely through the wealth of a film career, nor through the indulgences of seven husbands. It was assembled with study, with curiosity, and with a deliberate sense that great gems are objects of cultural patrimony as much as personal adornment. When Christie's sold her jewellery in December 2011, the four-day auction realised approximately 137 million dollars, a record for a single-owner sale of jewellery and a figure that Christie's noted exceeded every internal estimate.

The collector's education

Taylor wrote about her gems with unusual candour in her 2002 book My Love Affair with Jewelry. She made clear that the act of acquisition was, for her, inseparable from the history of each piece. She studied provenance, asked dealers about cutters and mines, and corresponded with auction specialists about lots that interested her. The dealer Ward Landrigan, who handled the estate of Suzanne Belperron and later acquired the Verdura archive, has recalled in trade interviews that Taylor approached gems with the seriousness of a curator. She is reported to have toured Harry Winston's premises repeatedly, asking detailed questions about pavilion angles, fluorescence, and the cutting choices behind specific stones.

The principal stones

Three pieces are central to Taylor's enduring reputation in the trade. The first is the Krupp Diamond, a 33.19-carat Asscher-cut stone of Type IIa character that Richard Burton bought for her at auction in 1968 for 305,000 dollars. Renamed the Elizabeth Taylor Diamond after her death, it was sold at Christie's in 2011 for 8.8 million dollars, then resold privately to the South Korean cosmetics company E-Land for a sum reported by trade press as exceeding that figure. The clarity, the proportions, and the absence of nitrogen impurity place the stone in the small fraction of diamonds graded Type IIa by GIA, a class that includes the Cullinan and the Koh-i-Noor.

The second is La Peregrina, a pear-shaped natural saltwater pearl of approximately 50.56 carats with a recorded provenance reaching back to the sixteenth century. The pearl was found in the Gulf of Panama and entered the Spanish royal collection under Philip II, who gave it to Mary Tudor on their marriage in 1554. Burton purchased the pearl for Taylor in 1969 from the Marchioness of Abercorn, with whom it had remained for several generations. Cartier remounted the pearl into a ruby and diamond necklace to Taylor's design in 1972. At the 2011 sale it brought 11.8 million dollars, a world record for a pearl at auction at the time.

The third is the Taylor-Burton Diamond, a 69.42-carat pear-shaped Type IIa stone cut by Harry Winston from the 240.80-carat rough mined at the Premier mine in South Africa. Cartier acquired the cut diamond at auction in October 1969 for 1,050,000 dollars, a record at the time. Burton purchased it from Cartier the following day for an undisclosed sum reported in the trade as approximately 1.1 million dollars, on the condition that Cartier could exhibit it for a period before delivery. Taylor wore it for the first time at Princess Grace's fortieth-birthday ball in Monaco. It was sold privately by Taylor in 1978 to fund a hospital wing in Botswana.

Coloured stones and historical pieces

Beyond the headline diamonds, Taylor's collection contained a remarkable concentration of important coloured stones. The Bulgari emerald and diamond suite, given by Burton during the filming of Cleopatra, is the canonical example. Its centrepiece, an octagonal Colombian emerald of 23.46 carats, was reset by Bulgari in Rome as a brooch convertible into a pendant. At the 2011 sale the brooch alone realised over 6.5 million dollars; the matching necklace, with seven octagonal emerald drops, sold for 6.13 million dollars. The pieces were bought by Bulgari for the company's heritage collection.

Taylor also owned the Mike Todd Tiara, a Tudor-style diamond and ruby tiara given to her by her third husband in 1957. Mike Todd had told her on giving it that she should wear it because she was his queen. She wore it to the 1957 Academy Awards. The tiara was sold in 2011 for 4.23 million dollars. Other notable lots included a Cartier ruby and diamond necklace of Burmese stones with no heat treatment, certified by Gubelin, and a Van Cleef and Arpels sapphire suite. The trade noted with particular interest the proportion of unheated and unenhanced stones in the collection. Taylor preferred natural-colour material at a time when heat-treated material was already standard at her price point.

Influence on the trade

Taylor's collecting did several things for the wider market. It legitimised the public discussion of provenance for coloured stones, at a time when even auction houses tended to publish only basic country-of-origin notes. Her insistence on Gubelin and SSEF reports for important rubies and sapphires set a standard that filtered down through the secondary market over the following two decades. She also normalised the idea, at least at the high end, that a great pearl is not a soft alternative to a great diamond but stands on its own terms. The price realised for La Peregrina in 2011 reset the auction expectations for natural saltwater pearls of historical importance.

Her advocacy for House of Taylor, the joint venture announced in 2005 with Kathy Ireland and Jack and Monty Abramov, was less successful and ended in litigation. The venture has little bearing on her standing as a collector. What endures is the Christie's catalogue, which functions as a working document of late twentieth-century connoisseurship: the photography is exact, the provenance is documented, and the gemological reports are reproduced. For the trade, that catalogue remains a teaching resource on what an important private collection looks like when it is assembled with care over a working lifetime.

Posthumous distribution

The 2011 sale dispersed the collection across institutions and private hands in roughly equal measure. Bulgari, Cartier, and Van Cleef and Arpels each repatriated pieces to their heritage archives, where they are periodically exhibited. The Smithsonian declined to bid on most lots, citing the prices, but received the donation of an unmounted historical bracelet through a separate arrangement. Several pieces went to private collectors in Asia and the Middle East. The collection has not been reassembled and almost certainly never will be. The benchmark it set, however, continues to inform how the trade catalogues, photographs, and prices great single-owner consignments.