This is less of a “jewel of the day” and more of a wonderful reportage of the exhibit preceding the Christie’s auction to be held Dec. 13 and 14. I wish I could be at one of these previews to see it in person, but my friend Robin Deutsch, jewellery historian par excellence, was there. I encourage you to read about her amazing research on the no-longer obscure German firm of Knoll and Pregizer here. She offers this terrific assessment of the jewels, the glitz, the glam, the not so glam and the downright awful:

When they took the “show on the road” for previews across the country and globe, they took Liz’s most well known, famous and costliest jewels. Seeing it at Christie’s was a different experience. Christie’s  The lines both days were long, but moved quicklyand orderly. For the most part there were very few well dressed or bejeweled people which surprised me. I stood on line next to a lovely young married couple who flew up from Atlanta for the day just to see this. That’s what an event it was. It took up most of the galleries on the first and second floors.

Her clothes for the most part were horrendous, but they were also a sign of the times. We did see some of her famous outfits and it was exciting to see her costume that she wore in Anne of the Thousand Days (she had a cameo) and from some of her films and Broadway shows. Let’s face it. Liz was gorgeous…probably the most beautiful woman alive. But she was NOT elegant. She was NOT Grace Kelly…and her clothing and many of her jewels highlighted that fact. There is a reason they chose those certain jewels for the ET jewelry book in 2002. Because they were the BEST and most beautiful of what she owned. A lot of it was ugly and gaudy and I could not believe it. (Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I LOVE gaudy…but this stuff was blech)
Especially the jewelry from her company that she had for a few years before her death called “The House of Taylor”. It was only in business for about three years. They said Liz designed many of the pieces and the company went bankrupt a couple of years before  her death and after seeing many of these pieces I’m not surprised. I doubt many of the pieces were sold and those were probably the ones she had. Unless they made many multiples which I doubt. To be honest, I’ve never been one for “gems”. For me it has to do with the design, so all of this ostentatious garbage was lost on me. AND to top it off…several of those necklaces had EXTENDER LINKS and LOBSTER CLAW CLASPS…like costume jewelry! Also much of the jewelry that was gifted to her by Michael Jackson was ugly including a set of diamond monkey jewelry. The really well loved, used and WORN (I mean could use a good restoration from LV) Louis Vuitton luggage with the name tags in violet that just said MINE were one of the highlights to see. OH, and her three OSCARS!!!!!!!!!!!! The family loaned them for display. I had never seen one in person. THAT was so amazingly thrilling. Her two best actress Oscars, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Oscar that she won. When you walked into the exhibit the first thing they showed was a room that had all of the jewelry boxes that stored her gems. She had written on them who gave them to her, the occasion and date.

I have the five catalogue collector set that I almost needed a forklift to get up to my apartment, it probably weighed 20 lbs, so I was able to really study everything before I went..except for the jewelry that is being sold online. There is no catalogue for that, and the pictures are very small. The good news is that for the most important jewels, the catalogue IS online and you can drool till your hearts content. The big sales are December 13 and 14. Christie’s is really milking this sale for everything they can. They even have $25 cuts outs of her most famous jewels. Like what they do for dolls clothes. You push out the picture of her Krupp/Elizabeth Taylor diamond and scotch tape it to your finger! I can barely contain myself until we find out the auction results and what everything sold for.

http://www.christies.com/elizabethtaylor/the_sales.aspx

I did like some of her caftans (I could see her rocking them with her turbans and 1970s Van Cleef and Bulgari jewelry). She had some pretty Chanel and Hermes bags. There were director’s chairs with her name on it, some of the bound scripts in violet leather engraved with gold lettering that had the name and date of the film on them. She had a Van Gogh, a Renoir, a lot of art nouveau pieces by Alphonse Mucha, Lalique…even a huge bronze cow statue that was done by her artist daughter Liza.  Of course the Krupp/Elizabeth Taylor diamond was one of the most breathtaking gems I’ve ever seen.(I still think there’s a CZ copy she must have had secretly floating around somewhere)  I loved the necklace that was willed to her by Edith Head of engraved opera discs. The very wealthyVictorians who had season tickets to the opera actually had round ivory discs that were their tickets, engraved with their names and the box number for the season. Edith Head had them each encased in a gold bezel and set on a beautiful large link chain. Elizabeth always admired it and Edith said when she died she would leave it to her in her will..and she did.

Her 1970s amethyst and coral (my absolute faves) Van Cleef jewelry was out of this world. So “Jomaz” looking. She had fabulous David Webb and Schlumberger jewels that Ciner and Kenneth Jay Lane copied (she has a lot of that costume up for sale). Her Bulgari emerald jewelry was incredible and her Bulgari sapphires, as were her beautiful Cartier rubies, her tiara, and other pieces given to her by Mike Todd and Richard Burton. Her art deco Egyptian revival bracelet was 2DIE4. She had lots of charm bracelets, pendants, gold jewelry,watches  and pieces that were very typical from the 1970s
and 1980s. Some gorgeous antique pieces. A beautiful small Fabergé egg necklace given to her by the family of her great friend Malcolm Forbes after his death. Her two very lovely, simple and thin diamond wedding rings from her two marriages to Richard Burton including the schmatta (Yiddish for rag) caftan wedding gown for their second marriage in Africa. Hideous.  A few pearl necklaces the size of gumballs. A couple of BREATHTAKING antique diamond necklaces and earrings. Really special. It was fun to look at the earrings from the sides to see Georgian earrings that she had converted to posts and omega backs! Her Cartier ruby earrings from Mike Todd were screwbacks (I love to look at findings on jewelry). A few drop dead art nouveau plique-a-jour dragonflies and butterflies that even moi, the insect hater, would have been thrilled to own. Her La Peregrina pearl necklace was breathtaking and I LOVED the Prince of Wales feather brooch that she bought from the Duchess of Windsor’s auction.Yellow diamonds, cognac diamonds…diamonds diamonds and more diamonds (looked like Weiss and Eisenberg after a while). I guess the most fun and poignant part was being able to glimpse into the world of Elizabeth. The unique, the fabulous, the exuberant, the showy, the fun, the vulgar, the tacky, the important and historic pieces she owned and loved and wore in her lifetime. Everything so very much HER.

I will tell you that I wore my Elizabeth Taylor by Avon copy of her Taj Mahal diamond necklace …people were flipping out over it. I wore it to both previews. Sunday no one even noticed it..not even when I was standing next to it cased in its own vitrine. Monday there were a lot of people that noticed it and were fascinated by it and even asked where I got it because they wanted one too. Unfortunately they did not allow photographs otherwise I would have had a photo of me next to it.

it was interesting to see that even Liz had “dogs” in her collection LOL. But I will say one thing. I teared up at certain points going through the exhibit. First, for the fact that she is gone. I’ve always loved her and still can’t believe it. But second, it’s just the strangest thing to see that after you are gone, everything that you’ve loved and treasured are just *things*. And if you’re famous, people will pay to just walk by to take a look and if they have the money, to buy them.

It’s so true what she said and I will never forget it. That she was only their caretaker in her lifetime as we are of the things in our collections that we love and mean something to us. It saddens me that this collection will be dispersed to all four corners of the globe as Elizabeth herself predicted. It was a once in a lifetime experience to see the personal effects of the worlds last great Hollywood movie star, and  I feel very lucky that I got to see her things twice.