Liz Taylor Property at Christie's

Christie's has started a world tour of items from the collection of the late actress Elizabeth Taylor.  The property consists of approximately 1,000 lots, and expectations are the sales will raise $50 million.  The items will be for sale late this year and in early 2012.

From an appraisal perspective these types of celebrity sales can be used as a good indicator for developing provenance premiums.

The sale will include the famous 33.19-carat emerald-cut diamond give to Taylor by Richard Burton, estimated to sell for $2.5 - $3 million (see image).  The jewelry from the estate is estimated to bring close to $30 million.

Bloomberg reports on the sales

The 33.19-carat emerald-cut diamond was a gift from Richard Burton, whom she married twice. Burton bought the piece at Sotheby’s, New York, in May 1968 for $305,000, then an auction record for such a ring. The stone, worn by Taylor on an almost- daily basis, will reappear at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza rooms priced at $2.5 million to $3 million on Dec. 13. The two-day sale of Taylor’s jewels is valued at $30 million.

A necklace incorporating a pear-shaped 203-grain pearl known as “La Peregrina” -- formerly part of the crown jewels of Spain -- was another Burton gift. It is valued at $2 million to $3 million.

The exhibition runs from today to Sept. 26 at Christie’s in London. The show, comprising more than 100 pieces, continues on a world tour to Los Angeles, Dubai, Geneva, Paris, Hong Kong and New York. Visitors to the London preview will be charged 10 pounds and the boxed five-volume catalog costs $300. A portion of these proceeds will be donated to the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation (ETAF), the auction house said in an e-mailed statement.

Landscape Claim

Taylor was the daughter of an art dealer, who championed the work of Augustus John in the U.S. He bought Van Gogh’s 1889 landscape “Vue de l’Asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy” for his daughter for 92,000 pounds at Sotheby’s (BID) London in 1963. The painting subsequently became the subject of a restitution claim that was rejected by a U.S. appeals court in 2007.

The intensely rendered canvas -- one of 17 artworks in the preview -- is now valued at 5 million pounds to 7 million pounds. Christie’s will include Taylor’s most valuable paintings in its London series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions on Feb. 7-8, 2012.

To read the complete Bloomberg article, click HERE.