Gem stories

Her majesty Queen Elizabeth II: This monarch has lots of jewelry. In fact she has so much jewelry that she has a special room to keep it all in about the size of an ice rink, and situated 50 feet beneath Buckingham Palace. Those do not even include the British Crown Jewels which are kept in separate Tower of London. The Queen's personal jewelry is conservatively valued at $58 million and most of it was received as way of gifts. One of the highlights of the collection is also called Timur Ruby, which actually a magnificent Spinel is weighing 352.49 carats. It is inscribed with the names of several of the previous owners as well, who were Mughals emperors. Other fabulous gems in her collection include the Cambridge and also Delhi Dunbar Parure, a fantastic suite of emerald jewelry that includes an emerald diadem; the Prince Albert Brooch, a huge sapphire that was given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert a day before their wedding; Queen Mary's large ruby earrings, and had a v-shaped ruby and diamond bandeau collar which the Queen models on the front cover of its publication "The Jewels of Queen Elizabeth", by Leslie Field, a whole book about her personal jewelry collection.

Marlene Dietrich in many of her movies wore her own suite of the dramatic jewelry that was set with huge cabochon emeralds. In "Stage Fright", Dietrich tries to use her jewelry to the blackmail Jane Wyman. She also wears her own ruby bracelet in that particular film: that bracelet recently sold at the Sotheby's for $991,000. Once when baking a cake at the Katherine Cornell's house, Marlene thought she had lost her 37.42-carat cabochon emerald ring that she had removed in the kitchen. The house was turned upside down but the ring was not found. It was only during dessert that the ring was introduced by one of the dinner guests inside a piece of the cake!

Mary Pickford was never shown on film wearing lots of jewelry than a string of pearls to preserve her image of her innocence, but in real life she loved very large rubies and star sapphires. She owned both the 70-carat Star of Bombay and the 250-carat Star of India. And she was not also shy about wearing them both at the same time.

Theda Bara didn't care for diamonds at all and also said so at every available opportunity. Instead, she was happy to ware an engraved emerald ring and a turquoise ring she called her talisman that she never took off.

Gloria Swanson had such basic extravagant taste in jewelry, which she had to rent it. In spite of paying only 12 percent of the value of her jewelry, two year her annual jewelry budget was $490,000. Gloria Swanson wore a very important emerald, amethyst and gold necklace by Iribe in "Affairs of Anatolia" in 1921, starting a fashion for colorful jewelry.

Jean Harlow also collected sapphires: her engagement ring was made from William Powell was a 152 carat cabochon sapphire. She wore it in her last movie, "Saratoga", in 1938.

Ivan Trump Mazzuchelli has a fantastic new engagement ring from her new husband set with a Kashmir sapphire from London jeweler Laurence Graff. Just goes to show you that this one has much better taste than her ex.