Elizabeth Taylor's Bulgari Emerald & Diamond Pendant-Brooch

A jewel made before its story began

The brooch is simple to describe and hard to forget: one large rectangular-cut emerald, framed by a surround of diamonds that turns the whole jewel into a pear shape, mounted in platinum and signed BVLGARI. The auction catalog dates it to 1958, four years before it reached Elizabeth Taylor, so it was not made for her.

The stone is reported at 23.46 carats. A laboratory report dated May 23, 2011, classified its origin as Colombian and rated its clarity enhancement, the oil or resin treatment that is routine for emeralds, as insignificant. The laboratory added a separate letter attesting to the stone's rarity.

One London exhibition text from 2016 describes the emerald as a 23.44-carat octagonal step-cut. The 23.46-carat figure appears in the 2011 sale results and in later references to the stone, and it is the one used on this page.

Rome, Bulgari and a film that would not end

Bulgari was founded in Rome in 1884 by Sotirios Voulgaris, a Greek silversmith known in Italy as Sotirio Bulgari. In 1905 the family opened the shop on Via Condotti that became its flagship, and in the 1950s, when Rome was known as Hollywood on the Tiber, its clients included Anna Magnani, Ingrid Bergman, Gina Lollobrigida and Elizabeth Taylor. In that decade the house also introduced its en tremblant floral brooches, whose diamond petals quiver on springs as the wearer moves.

Taylor came to Rome to make Cleopatra. After a failed start in England, production moved to the Cinecitta studios, where filming resumed on September 25, 1961, without a finished script. It wrapped on July 28, 1962, at a reported production cost of $31 million, the most expensive film ever made up to that point. Taylor later wrote that one of the biggest advantages of filming in Rome was Bulgari's shop, where she would visit Gianni Bulgari in the afternoons and swap stories.

On the set she began an affair with her co-star, Richard Burton, while both were married to other people: Taylor to the singer Eddie Fisher, Burton to Sybil Williams. By the spring of 1962 the press had branded the couple 'Liz and Dick,' and the Vatican newspaper published an open letter condemning Taylor for 'erotic vagrancy.'

An engagement jewel from a tray of emeralds

The auction catalog records the brooch simply as a 'gift from Richard Burton upon their engagement, 1962.' A later account says Gianni Bulgari came to the studio with a tray of emeralds and that Taylor chose this brooch. Burton's own line about the period became part of the house's legend: 'The only Italian word Elizabeth knows is Bulgari.' He also joked, 'I introduced Liz to beer, she introduced me to Bulgari.'

Accounts differ on whether this was Taylor's first Bulgari jewel. One wire-service report on a 2013 exhibition called the emerald brooch her first piece of Bulgari jewelry. Other published accounts give that place to an emerald and diamond en tremblant flower brooch, which they say Eddie Fisher gave her. The sources do not settle it.

Taylor divorced Fisher on March 5, 1964, and married Burton ten days later at the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal. The brooch did not stay a stand-alone jewel. Burton went on to give her a Bulgari necklace of sixteen emeralds in diamond surrounds, made with a hoop at the front so the brooch could hang from it as a pendant. She could wear it alone or as the centerpiece of that necklace. Photographs from the London set of The V.I.P.s in 1963 are captioned as showing her wearing it, though one published account describes the brooch she wore in that film as a different, trembling flower brooch from Eddie Fisher.

December 13, 2011

Taylor died in Los Angeles on March 23, 2011, at 79. That December her jewels were offered at auction in New York in a sale that began with an 80-lot evening session on December 13. The Bulgari emerald suite came up together: the necklace as lot 28, this brooch as lot 29, then the ear pendants and the bracelet.

The brooch was estimated at $500,000 to $700,000. It sold for $6,578,500 with fees, or $280,000 per carat. That set two world auction records at once: the highest price for an emerald jewel and the highest price per carat for an emerald. The necklace it hangs from brought $6,130,500 one lot earlier, the ear pendants $3,218,500 and the bracelet $4,002,500.

One of the auctioneers said afterward that he had never seen bidders jump from $2 million to $4 million in a single bid. The evening session totaled $115,932,000, and the full jewelry sale of 270 lots brought $137,235,675, every lot sold. That made it the most valuable private collection of jewels ever sold at auction, more than double the $50,281,887 that the Duchess of Windsor's jewels had brought in 1987.

The buyer was announced as anonymous. Bulgari was widely reported to have bought the main Taylor pieces, and in February 2013 the house put eight of them on view at its Beverly Hills boutique the week before the Academy Awards, calling the emerald brooch out by name. In 2016 the house showed seven of the jewels, described as now in its own collection, above its new Bond Street boutique in London.

How to recognize it

The brooch is a single rectangular-cut emerald in a pear-shaped diamond frame, in platinum, signed BVLGARI and dated 1958. It is designed to be worn alone or suspended from the matching 1962 necklace, so period photographs show it both ways. It carries a laboratory report numbered CS 44852, dated May 23, 2011, that gives a Colombian origin and insignificant clarity enhancement.

Its records have not all lasted. In June 2017 an 18.04-carat Colombian emerald set in a ring, known as the Rockefeller Emerald, sold for $5,511,500, about $305,000 per carat, and took the per-carat record. The Taylor brooch's total price was higher than that sale.

The jewel's value has always been tied to its story as much as to its stone. The same sale set a per-carat record for a colorless diamond with Taylor's 33.19-carat ring, and the house that made the brooch is reported to have bought its own work back, and has shown it publicly since.

The numbers

Carat weight

About 23.46 carats (one 2016 exhibition text gives 23.44)

Color and clarity

No color grade published; 2011 laboratory report rates clarity enhancement as insignificant

Origin

Colombia, per the 2011 laboratory report; the specific mine is not stated in the sources consulted

Cut

Rectangular-cut (also described as octagonal step-cut), in a pear-shaped diamond surround

Cutter

Not recorded in the sources consulted

Setting

Platinum, signed BVLGARI, 1958

Timeline

1. 1884

   Sotirios Voulgaris founds the jewelry business in Rome that becomes Bulgari.

2. 1905

   The Via Condotti shop opens and becomes the house's flagship.

3. 1958

   Bulgari makes the emerald and diamond pendant-brooch, according to the auction catalog.

4. Sep 25, 1961

   Cleopatra resumes filming at the Cinecitta studios in Rome with Taylor in the title role.

5. 1962

   Richard Burton gives Taylor the brooch upon their engagement, during the Rome production of Cleopatra.

6. Jul 28, 1962

   Filming of Cleopatra wraps.

7. Jun 12, 1963

   Cleopatra premieres at the Rivoli Theatre in New York.

8. Mar 15, 1964

   Taylor and Burton marry in Montreal; Burton later gives her the Bulgari emerald necklace from which the brooch can hang.

9. Mar 23, 2011

   Elizabeth Taylor dies in Los Angeles at age 79.

10. May 23, 2011

    A laboratory report classifies the emerald's origin as Colombian with insignificant clarity enhancement.

11. Dec 13, 2011

    The brooch sells at auction in New York as lot 29 for $6,578,500, world records for an emerald jewel and an emerald per carat.

12. Feb 2013

    Bulgari shows the brooch among eight Taylor jewels at its Beverly Hills boutique in Oscar week.

13. 2016

    Bulgari exhibits seven Taylor jewels, now in its own collection, above its Bond Street boutique in London.

14. Jun 20, 2017

    The 18.04-carat Rockefeller Emerald sells for $5,511,500 and takes the per-carat record for an emerald.

The world in 1962

• Feb 20, 1962

  John Glenn orbits the Earth three times aboard Friendship 7, the first American to do so.

• Mar 18, 1962

  France and Algeria sign the Evian Accords, ending the Algerian War.

• Jul 23, 1962

  The Telstar satellite relays the first live transatlantic television signal.

• Aug 5, 1962

  Marilyn Monroe is found dead at her home in Los Angeles.

• Oct 1962

  The Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of nuclear war.

• Oct 11, 1962

  Pope John XXIII opens the Second Vatican Council, the first ecumenical council in 92 years.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Elizabeth Taylor's Bulgari Emerald & Diamond Pendant-Brooch is number 24 of 100 in the jewelry entries of the FLOAT 100. 44 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (19 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The brooch is dated 1958, about four years before Burton gave it to Taylor.
• It sold for more than nine times its high estimate of $700,000.
• It was designed to be convertible: it can be pinned on as a brooch or hung from the front of Taylor's Bulgari emerald necklace as a pendant.
• Burton joked that Bulgari was the only Italian word Taylor knew.
• The necklace, brooch, ear pendants and bracelet of Taylor's Bulgari emerald suite sold as four consecutive lots for a combined $19,930,000.
• The brooch held the per-carat auction record for an emerald for about five and a half years, until the Rockefeller Emerald sold in June 2017.