Anglo-American actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) was one of Cartier’s major Hollywood clients. Her autobiography, eloquently titled My Love Affair with Jewelry (published in 2002), has a great deal to say about her passion for gems and jewelry, given to her during eight marriages to seven different men, including her tumultuous partnership with Richard Burton (1925–1984), whom she married twice.
A passion for jewelry
Elizabeth Taylor was born in London in 1937. The Taylor family also had roots in America, and moved to the western United States at the outbreak of World War II. A few years later the young Liz began a precocious career, appearing in her first Hollywood studio film at the age of ten, propelled by her mother, also an actress. That was the start of a life-long Hollywood career marked by ups and downs—she twice won Oscars for Best Actress, in 1961 and again in 1967—until Taylor finally retired in 2003. She died in 2011 from heart failure. At her death, she owned one of the largest collections of jewelry in the world—the auction held at Christies New York on December 13 and 14, 2001, numbered 290 lots. They included items made by Cartier as well as historic pieces that passed through the Cartier workshop, most of them given to Taylor by the men in her life.
A matching diamond-and-ruby set
Taylor’s love affair with Michael Todd (1909–1958)—her third marriage, and the only one that did not end in divorce, but at Todd’s accidental death—was immortalized by a home movie taken on vacation in 1957. It was shot by one of Taylor’s close friends in the Villa La Fiorentina—which the couple was renting—near Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera. The film shows Todd giving a happy Taylor, at the edge of the pool, a red Cartier jewelry box containing a parure (matching set) of necklace, pendant earrings and bracelet, all composed of diamonds and rubies. The necklace, made by Cartier in 1951, could also be worn as a tiara. The color movie recorded the couple’s happiness in that summer of 1957, a moment Taylor later described as “a perfect summer day and a day of perfect love.”
The Peregrina: a historic pearl
A relationship of trust grew between the actress and the jeweler as the result of her visits to Cartier boutiques in Paris, Monte Carlo, London and especially New York. In addition to the jewelry she purchased, Taylor commissioned Cartier to design settings for her fabulous gemstones. Those historic stones were marks of love for her by the man who bought them, actor Richard Burton.
Their passion began on the set of Cleopatra in the early 1960s. Married from 1964 to 1974, they divorced only to remarry, briefly, from 1975 to 1976. On Valentine’s Day in 1969 Burton gave her a natural pearl bought at auction, then thought to be the famous Peregrina pearl from the Spanish court of Philip II (reigned 1566–1598). The couple asked Cartier designers to come up with a Renaissance-style setting—Taylor was inspired by a portrait of Queen Mary Tudor (1516–1558), now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, which shows her wearing a pendant that ends in a pear-shaped pearl. The design drawing for the necklace, still in Cartier archives, bears Taylor’s comments in red ink, constituting valuable, eloquent testimony to her close relationship with the jeweler.
Taylor–Burton: a legendary couple, a legendary diamond
Also in 1969, Burton bought Taylor another extraordinary gem, a diamond now named after the couple. First purchased by Cartier for over one million dollars, the 69.42-carat Taylor-Burton diamond was immediately sold to the actor, who had Cartier set it on a necklace after it had been publicly displayed in Cartier showrooms in New York and Chicago. But the couple was also fond of less renowned jewels. Two years earlier, in 1967, Burton gave Taylor a gold ring, labeled “Serpent” in the archives, made in 1966 from a model designed the previous year. Similarly, Taylor owned a pink and gold Tank watch dated 1959. In 1970, Taylor and Burton were one of the first couples to sport the Love bracelet, embodying their legendary love affair.
An old diamond in the shape of a heart
Bought from Cartier in 1972, this diamond was another statement of love. While changing planes in New York’s JFK airport, Burton asked to see the heart-shaped diamond immediately. He bought it for Taylor’s fortieth birthday; Cartier then designed an Indian-style gold-and-ruby chain for it, which the actress wore on her fortieth-birthday party in Budapest.
