In the 2002 introduction to her book, My Love Affair with Jewelry, Elizabeth Taylor wrote that “Looking at these beautiful pieces of jewelry has invariably stirred up many moving memories.” I felt very much the same way thumbing through the Christie’s catalogue of Elizabeth Taylor’s extraordinary collection fit for a museum or the movie screen. Like millions, I’ve been captivated by the stories of this iconic beauty and hollywood legend brought to life again thanks to the auction block. How fitting that Elizabeth Taylor made auction history with the largest private sale in history bringing in over $116 million in just the first night of the sale alone? The collection shattered six other records including the highest price paid at auction for a pearl ($11.8 million).
This week’s sale has also carried personal sentiments for me after discovering that it included eight pieces given to Elizabeth Taylor by my grandfather, Malcolm Forbes.
I first met Elizabeth Taylor when I was 7 years old. As my father recounted, Elizabeth Taylor and my grandfather had “hit it off immediately, when they first met in the mid-1980s. Both had a strong, adventurous and unconventional approach to life.”
We would often visit my grandfather who lived just a few miles away for dinner, gathering on his outside patio over long summer evenings. I distinctly recall an evening when “Ms. Taylor” joined. “Her eyes are amazing, just look at her eyes,” said my mother uncharacteristically to my three sisters and me as we piled into the station wagon heading to my grandfather’s house. Her eyes were indeed beautiful. She had a distinct sense of how to make even a seven year old feel special, always drawing me and my three sisters into the conversation among ‘grown ups.’ She even told us not to call her Ms. Taylor as my parents had instructed, but rather Elizabeth – and if we disobeyed, she exclaimed that we would be punished!
At one point, Elizabeth Taylor casually pulled off the famous 33-carat D color diamond ring from Richard Burton and placed it on the fingers of my sister Catherine and me. Little did we know what we were ‘playing’ with – the ring fetched over $8 million dollars at auction.
I don’t remember spending time with an iconic movie star but rather a woman who was incredibly kind, warm, and generous. Elizabeth Taylor never pretended to be immune to life’s adversities and challenges. I remember that she also always made my grandfather laugh – they made each other laugh.
The diverse array of jewels and fashion items up for sale this week are fitting reminders of Elizabeth Taylor’s great passion for life. After meeting my grandfather, she traded in couture gowns for cowboy boots and a leather jacket, hopping on the back of his Harley Davidson for what would mark her very first motorcycle ride. “Not many people can teach anything to Elizabeth but I can teach her how to ride a motorcycle,” recounted my grandfather. He later presented her with a custom-built lavender colored Harley Davidson of her own. During one afternoon ride, Taylor proudly showed off her newly acquired biker tattoos (temporary of course), and she and my grandfather exchanged matching motorcycle rings. “I wanted to give her a ring bigger than what Richard gave her,” joked my grandfather.
It was in this same sense of jest that my grandfather also gave Elizabeth Taylor a suite of paper-cutout jewels which she fondly recalled in My Love Affair with Jewelry. I know my grandfather would have gotten a kick out of seeing the cutouts appear as “Lot 136” within the extraordinary catalogue of her jewelry collection, particularly as their estimate ($200- $300) had notably far fewer decimal points than most of the iconic pieces in the sale. As the consummate businessman, he would also have been particularly proud that the gift of just a few dollars yielded what is likely the greatest ‘return on investment’ in this historic auction. The paper cutouts closed at an astounding hammer price of $6,000.
My grandfather’s gifts were often unconventional yet always carried great thought and meaning irrespective of “value.” While he quipped that diamonds are “nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs,” he loved giving jewelry. I watched several of his gifts to Elizabeth Taylor pass the auction block this morning, including a ruby bracelet, a horse-shaped broach, as well as a dazzling Faberge photo frame once presented by Czar Nicholas II to his wife Alexandra.
The frame included a photograph of my grandfather and the radiant Elizabeth Taylor at the 70th anniversary party for Forbes Magazine in 1987. She was equally stunning several years later again at my grandfather’s side for his 70th birthday party in Tangier, Morocco. For the festivities, she wore an emerald green kaftan, Lot 1662. Taylor’s sense of iconic style is as equally present in her array of kaftans as it is in her collection of couture gowns and cowboy boots, currently all still up for grabs in the online portion of the auction closing later this week.
In clicking through the online auction yesterday, I discovered a pair of earrings given to Elizabeth Taylor during a trip made by my grandfather to LA in June of 1989. The lot has no description of the giver, but my grandfather presented these earrings to Elizabeth Taylor alongside a cake shaped as an Imperial Faberge egg. The “cake cost almost as much as the real thing,” joked my grandfather. My grandfather was then asked asked what the occasion was for such gifts. “It’s always an occasion,” he said, “to be with Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth Taylor wore these earrings just eight months later when she attended my grandfather’s funeral.
