Editor’s Note
As yellow gold and diamond-set jewelry watches surge in popularity, iconic pieces from Elizabeth Taylor’s legendary collection are capturing the spotlight once again.
As yellow gold and diamond-set jewelry watches gain popularity, the iconic timepieces from Elizabeth Taylor’s collection are drawing significant attention.
In 1969, a remarkable scene unfolded as thousands of people queued for days outside the Cartier store in New York. They flocked to see the 69.42-carat pear-cut diamond that Richard Burton had purchased from a French jeweler for $1.1 million (worth approximately $12 billion in 2024). Burton noted in his diary that he acted almost like a ‘madman’ to win the gem at auction. The rough stone was set into a necklace, and its three-week journey to reach Taylor in Monaco was akin to a crime thriller. Armed bodyguards secretly transported the necklace in a briefcase, flanked by two additional decoy bodyguards. The Taylor-Burton Diamond became the most notable piece in Elizabeth Taylor’s jewelry collection, renowned for its unparalleled historical value and brilliance. Most of the Elizabeth Taylor Collection was sold through Christie’s auction in 2011, which also included numerous pieces from Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels, as well as the 50.56-carat 16th-century natural pearl ‘La Peregrina,’ once owned by the Spanish royal family.
While Taylor’s watch collection may have been somewhat overshadowed by the grandeur of her jewelry archive, Bulgari Heritage curator Gislain Aucremanne explains:
Indeed, the stories behind the watches she owned are worthy of a Hollywood screenplay.
Elizabeth Taylor was an avid admirer of Bulgari jewelry. After visiting Rome in 1962 to film Cleopatra, she acquired several distinctive Bulgari pieces, including the Serpenti.
She owned a Bulgari ‘Serpenti Secret Watch’ with a coiled strap that wound around the wrist, which came into her possession while filming Cleopatra in Rome in 1962. The Queen of the Nile, then a married woman, had secret rendezvous with her lover Richard Burton in a private room at the Bulgari store on Via dei Condotti in Rome. This room, filled with all manner of jewels, had a secret entrance. Although 20th Century Fox was on the verge of bankruptcy due to Cleopatra‘s ballooning production costs (which included costumes made of 24K gold), Aucreman notes that the watch was a gift to the actress from the film studio, not from her husband Eddie Fisher or her lover Burton. When Taylor visited Rome again in 2010, Bulgari Chairman Paolo Bulgari gifted her another Serpenti, this time delivered in a much simpler manner.
There are also unique pieces associated with Taylor, though not necessarily worn by her. Before her scandalous affair with Burton, Taylor gifted her fourth husband, Fisher, whom she married in 1959, a Cartier Tank watch. It was engraved with the phrase ‘When time began…’. A standout model in her Cartier watch collection was a 1920s Art Deco tonneau-shaped dial watch. This watch was already a vintage piece when she owned it and sold for $80,500 at Christie’s in 2011.
Francesca Cartier Brickell, author of The Cartiers, said:
Cartier later repurchased the collection of gold Cartier watches she owned, including a very thin-cased Tank Louis on a black silk strap, all of which became part of the maison’s private collection. However, the most outstanding watch in her collection was an Art Deco pendant watch with a diamond chain. Featuring a rock crystal elephant obscuring the dial, this watch was featured in Taylor’s book Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair with Jewelry, which chronologically documented only the finest pieces from her collection.
Also noteworthy are three Piaget jewelry watches from the 1960s-70s with handcrafted gold strap decorations. One of these was sold directly to Taylor by Yves Piaget, the founder’s great-grandson and current honorary chairman, in 1969 while she and Burton were on vacation at a ski resort in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. In his late twenties at the time, he sold her a model with a jade oval dial mounted on a yellow gold cuff. Jean-Bernard Forot, Piaget’s Heritage Director, vividly described that day:
Time is an absolute concept, and the global actress seemed to value watches as much as time itself. But was she meticulous about time management? Tim Mendelson, trustee of the House of Taylor, emphasized that her watch collection “celebrates her love for all things shiny and sparkling.” However, he offered a different perspective on the concept of punctuality:
