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Glittering
Stones >> Gems And Uses
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.
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