Elizabeth Taylor’s Sapphires

For Elizabeth Taylor, a woman who never wore jewelry to blend in, bold and brilliant sapphires were quite appealing. Throughout her life, she wore her jewels with confidence, and few stones suited that character like the sapphire: bold in color, rich in history, and impossible to overlook. Not only did these stones make a statement, they marked several moments in time throughout her remarkable life.

After her tumultuous first marriage to Nicky Hilton, Elizabeth wanted steadiness, and she found it in Michael Wilding, a British actor 20 years her senior whom she met while filming Ivanhoe. Always courageous when following love, Elizabeth proposed to Wilding and chose her own engagement ring: a large sapphire circled by two rows of diamonds, which later accounts describe as a sugarloaf cabochon. The couple married with a simple ceremony at Caxton Hall on February 21, 1952, six days before her 20th birthday. Photographs of the ring spread quickly afterwards, and jewelers reported a wave of requests for sapphire engagement rings in the same style. The marriage lasted five years and gave Elizabeth two sons, Michael and Christopher, and she spoke of Wilding with warmth for the rest of her life.

Sapphires returned to Elizabeth’s story with her relationship with Richard Burton, a man who never needed an occasion to give her jewels. One of many gifts he surprised her with was a late 19th-century Victorian style brooch, featuring a cushion-shaped Burmese sapphire of 37.29 carats, in the deep, saturated shade gemologists call royal blue. The stone shows no sign of heat treatment, a rarity at that size. Old mine and old European-cut diamonds frame it in a setting of silver and yellow gold.

Elizabeth wore the brooch twice in the summer of 1969, first to present a £100,000 donation to a children’s charity, and then as a bridesmaid at the wedding of Robert Wilson, Burton’s longtime dresser, with Burton as best man. The ceremony took place at Caxton Hall, the same London registry office where she had married Michael Wilding 17 years earlier. When Elizabeth wore the brooch, she made it her own, wearing it horizontally rather than the expected vertical position.  

Of all the jewelers Elizabeth and Richard Burton worked with, none held a place in the couple’s story like Bulgari. “I introduced Liz to beer, she introduced me to Bulgari,” he liked to say. The Roman house supplied many of his grandest gifts, and their sapphire sautoir ranks among the most important.

Burton gave this special gift to Elizabeth on her 40th birthday. The couple were in Budapest, where he was filming Bluebeard, and they marked the milestone with a weekend of celebrations for family and famous friends. According to Bulgari’s heritage curator, Burton chose the piece because the sapphire’s intense blue reminded him of her eyes. 

The art-deco style piece features a Burmese sugarloaf cabochon sapphire of 52.72 carats, edged in calibré-cut sapphires, and set on an octagonal pendant of pavé-set diamonds. The chain, nearly 30 inches long, repeats the pattern in sapphire and diamond links. For her birthday, Elizabeth wore it doubled, so the pendant sat highly visible. She also wore the sautoir to Burton’s 50th birthday, to Studio 54 with Halston, and on countless occasions in between. She later acquired a Bulgari Trombino ring, also set with a large sugarloaf sapphire, as its perfect match.

When Christie’s auctioned her collection in December 2011 after Elizabeth’s passing, both Burton sapphires were included in the sale. The Victorian brooch sold for $1,314,500  The Bulgari sautoir, estimated at 600,000–800,000, sold for $5,906,500. Fittingly, the buyer was Bulgari themselves, bringing the piece home to its heritage collection. It has since anchored the house’s exhibitions, including a 2020 showing at the Brooklyn Museum. The Wilding engagement ring did not appear in the sale.

Nearly 75 years after Elizabeth chose her own sapphire and diamond engagement ring, the Brilliant Earth × Elizabeth Taylor collection, created with House of Taylor, invites a new generation to do the same. Like her meaningful pieces, their lab-grown sapphires are meant to punctuate your meaningful moments. Shop the sapphires at Brilliant Earth.