The Taylor-Burton Diamond is a pear-shaped diamond, originally 69.42 carats, that Cartier New York purchased at auction at Parke-Bernet on 23 October 1969 for $1,050,000, then the highest price paid at auction for a diamond. The firm named it the Cartier Diamond and put it on public display at 653 Fifth Avenue before Richard Burton bought it from them for Elizabeth Taylor.
Before the auction
The rough stone was discovered at South Africa's Premier Mine in 1966, weighing 241 carats. Harry Winston acquired it, and his master cleaver, Pastor Colon Jr., spent six months studying it before cutting it into the pear shape. The diamond's first owner after cutting was Harriet Annenberg Ames, sister of the American publisher and diplomat Walter Annenberg, who purchased it from Winston in 1967 but reportedly found it too conspicuous to wear and kept it in a bank vault. She sent it to auction two years later.
The 1969 auction and Cartier's purchase
The Parke-Bernet sale drew intense interest. Among the bidders were Aristotle Onassis, who dropped out at $700,000, and Robert Kenmore of the Kenton Corporation, the parent company of Cartier, who won at $1,050,000. As a condition of the sale, the buyer could name the stone, and Cartier christened it the Cartier Diamond.
The day after the auction, Richard Burton contacted Cartier and negotiated directly. He paid a reported $1.1 million. As part of the agreement, Cartier retained the right to exhibit the stone, and the newly renamed Taylor-Burton Diamond was put on display at 653 Fifth Avenue, where an estimated 6,000 people queued daily to see it.
The necklace
Elizabeth Taylor found the ring setting too heavy to wear comfortably. She commissioned Cartier to design a necklace for the stone at a cost of $80,000, reputedly so that the pendant sat across a tracheotomy scar from a 1961 illness. Taylor first wore the necklace at Princess Grace of Monaco's 40th birthday party on 12 November 1969, and again at the 42nd Academy Awards in April 1970. An insurance policy with Lloyd's of London stipulated that she could wear the diamond publicly for no more than thirty days per year, and then only accompanied by armed guards.
Later history
After her second divorce from Burton, Taylor sold the diamond in June 1979 to New York jeweler Henry Lambert for a price reported to be between $3 million and $5 million; she directed that a portion of the proceeds fund the construction of a hospital in Botswana. In December 1979, Lambert sold the stone to the jewellery firm Mouawad, who had it slightly recut in 1980. It now weighs 68.09 carats and remains with the Mouawad family.
The story is explored in three blog posts: The Taylor-Burton Diamond, The Cartier Diamond, Part I, and The Cartier Diamond, Part II.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 11 ("The End of an Era, 1957–1974")
- GIA, "Famous Diamonds: The Taylor-Burton Diamond," 4cs.gia.edu (origin, cutting, and first ownership)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 329, 331 et al.
- Mouawad, "The Legendary Taylor-Burton Diamond," mouawad.com (1979 sale and current weight)
- Wikipedia: The Taylor-Burton Diamond
