Christie’s is claiming no less than a dozen world records for the December 13, 2011, auction, known officially as The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor: The Legendary Jewels evening sale. Day after the sale, I posted about five of them. With a haul of almost $116 million, the sale was the most valuable private collection...
Christie’s sale of Elizabeth Taylor’s famous jewels was anticipated to be the most important single-owner jewelry sale in a decade, but the results were staggering. Taylor’s jewelry went for $115,932,000 – the most ever paid for a private jewelry collection. World record prices were also set for pearls, diamonds, rubies and Indian jewels. Recession,...
Rahul Kadakia met Elizabeth Taylor at an auction in Cannes in 1999. “I was a young boy and here was Miss Taylor, Hollywood star and humanitarian, and she was right there beside me, helping me raise funds for the American Foundation for Aids Research,” says Kadakia. “I thought, you know, this is the mark...
Most of us know by now that Dali, Calder, even Picasso designed jewelry at some point. But Yoko Ono, Frank Stella, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons? Before Picasso to Koons went up at the Museum of Arts and Design last month, I didn’t know they designed jewelry. Most of it is from the collection of...
If there was any doubt that red carpet minimalism is giving way to big gems and over-the-top glam, last night’s Emmy Awards proved it. And not just white diamonds – although there were plenty of those – but gems in all colors of the rainbow. Jewels by Lorraine Schwartz were a special case in...
Continued from Jewelry by Picasso: the secret stash of Dora Maar, part 2 Gloria Lieberman, director of fine jewelry at Skinners in Boston, had not seen the jewelry Picasso made for Dora Maar when we spoke before the 1998 auction, though she has sold plenty of the jewelry he designed with François Hugo in...
Continued from Jewelry by Picasso: the secret stash of Dora Maar, part 1: At the auction, a chrome-metal watch with a brass plaque engraved with a portrait of Maar sold for about $63,000 – 19 times its estimated value of $3,300. A portrait ring in a metal frame of lattice flower work, estimated at...
In case you were wondering, the Picasso in Picasso to Koons: Artist as Jeweler, opening next month at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, is Pablo, not his daughter Paloma, who designed jewelry for Tiffany. Among the 135 pieces of jewelry by famous 20th century artists, you’ll find five by Pablo Picasso,...
I’ve been obsessed with Hendrix again since watching the 1973 documentary Jimi Hendrix, followed by the 2007 biopic. Hendrix was long gone before I was aware he existed. So I grew up listening to him, not watching him. I remember parking in a cornfield with a high school boyfriend on a summer night, listening...
You know you’re obsessed with a show when you have to watch every behind-the-scenes special feature on the DVD. That’s where I’m at right now with The Good Wife. There’s one feature on the final disc of Season 1 called “Clothing the Characters,” that I highly recommend. It focuses on the show’s costume designer...
