Keep your relationships on the rocks

There is a primal pleasure to be had in rooting through one's baubles. In childhood I used to rummage, round-mouthed, in my mother's jewel box. I see this reliquary still: matriarchal engagement rings, a Diana-blue sapphire from a lost love and the disjecta of five small lives - milk teeth, house badges, beads wept over yet never restrung. The goal was always to carry off a trophy, to pull off a baton-pass between generations. Just so do I nowadays fill my own casket with magpie wares for little fingers to make off with.

At present, a consummation most devoutly being wished by the jewellery industry is the mooted sale at auction of the late Elizabeth Taylor's collection: not least, the pieces she amassed during her on-off-on-off trystage with Richard Burton.

The overture to this great romance was played out against the backdrop of Rome - and particularly Bulgari's store on Via Condotti - during the two years Burton and Taylor spent filming Cleopatra. In February 1962, Eddie Fisher attempted to woo his wayward wife with 30.97 carats of Bulgari.

Burton trumped his rival by whisking his co-star to the same emporium. Here she acquired an emerald and diamond parure; and with it, a new husband.

Burton used to present Taylor with what she referred to as her "It's Tuesday, I love you" pieces. His "It's your 40th birthday, I love you" gift was a sautoir with a 65-carat Burmese sapphire of conkeresque proportions.

How does one encourage such largesse? The answer, if Taylor's autoblingography My Love Affair with Jewelry is to be believed, is that she simply asked. Of course, much depends on the way one asks. Quoth our heroine: "I would… practically make love to him in Bulgari."

There will be those who regard this behaviour as fabulously epic; for others it may smack of the courtesan. Either way, a good many of those attending the auction of Taylor's $150 million (£94 million) booty at Christie's New York (the date has yet to be announced) will be women intent on securing swag for themselves: in particular the notorious Right Hand Ring.

This concept - like most such twinkling sales notions - originated with De Beers. In 1947 it gave us the legend: "A diamond is forever." Sixty years later, it transpired that this was an interval somewhat longer than most marriages. Moreover, not even the promise of a sparkly knuckleduster was enough to bribe certain women into wedlock in these freewheeling times.

So the wily rockbrokers expanded the diamond's romantic myth-kitty to accommodate the idea of self-love. Or, by their Sesame Street logic: "Your left hand says 'we'. Your right hand says 'me'.

Law notes

Jewelers' circular-keystone, JCK.

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