I came across an interview this week with Lynda Resnick, the marketing genius  and billionaire [former] owner of the Franklin Mint. You remember the Franklin Mint, right?

Ms. Resnick doesn’t own the Franklin Mint anymore, having made a bundle off it in the 1990s and then selling it for a crap load of money a few years ago. She now makes her pile with other businesses including Pom Wonderful — the woman is a marketing GENIUS.

She recently went through a round of interviews to promote her new book, whose title I’ve forgotten, about how she can sell almost anything to almost anybody. All this is just prelude to the most interesting thing I’ve ever read: In one interview, Ms. Resnick is asked whether there is anything she regrets selling. (Mind you, this is the woman who sold so many crappy  Princess Diana dolls, etc., that the official Princess Diana memorial Fund called Ms. Resnick and the Franklin Mint “vultures feeding on the dead.”)

Do you know what Ms. Resnick said she regretted foisting onto the American public?

This line of kitty cat plates.

She said that she regretted making a product that stooped to a “taste level” she didn’t believe in. 

Note to self, re: my future Cat Book: GO FOR THIS EXACT SAME TASTE LEVEL. Ms. Resnick made $25 million on these plates. That’s a lot of cat food and a lot of cases of Champagne-O-Meters.

And I got to thinking. Because, as you dear readers may or may not know, I used to be in the business of Good Taste.

As the Faberge Expert for Christie’s Auction House in New York, I had quite a hoity-toity level of taste, which I have not lost lo these many years later. Yes, I still have great taste, I’m just saying.

I actually handled this Faberge Egg (above), the Nobel Ice Egg, in 1994. We acquired it in America, but sold it in Geneva. More  hoity-toity that way.

I had to fix the jeweled watch “surprise” that came in the egg (all of Faberge’s Imperial and other Famous eggs came with “surprises”). The egg and watch had been made c.1910 and things get rusty if you don’t play with them. The Nobel egg was made for Emanuel Nobel, nephew of Alfred, the Nobel Prize guy. It sold for $220,000. I later wrote a whole scholarly article for a hoity-toity antiques magazine about the designer of both  The Nobel Ice Egg, and this one:

I had my hands on this egg, too — but this one is an Imperial Egg, made for the Romanovs. It is called The Winter Egg and it was quite exciting when it appeared on the market, having been “lost” from sight for about 50 years. It sold, again in Geneva, for $5.6 million. It later sold again, in 2002, again at Christie’s, for $9.6 million. It was designed by a young woman–the only woman allowed to design eggs–called Alma Piehl (Peel). That’s who I wrote about, bringing her name and work to public attention for the first time. Because I had the good taste to recognize that the same hand was at work on these two eggs and I researched to discover the lovely girl who came up with this most original idea of “ice” eggs. She also made a number of  “ice” jewelry for Emanuel Nobel, who was quite a ladies’ man.

At the time of its creation, in 1913,the Winter Egg was the most expensive Romanov Egg every made. It is small and heartbreakingly lovely. I am glad that I had the chance in my lifetime to handle such extraordinary object of art.

But you know, the Faberge Eggs were not always revered as objects of great taste. They were once thought of as tacky, second-rate tchokahs. They were poo-pooed by the art establishment, and I remember reading that in the 1950s the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was offered a few eggs for their collection and they looked down their noses and refused to take them. So, again, back to the issue of “taste”.

These days, if you want to decorate your home with objects of good taste, you can buy reproduction Faberge eggs from something called House of Faberge. Let’s investigate the “taste level” of House of Faberge, for example, in this egg:

This might not seem to be in the same category of hideousness as a Franklin Mint cat plate, unless you know can compare it to a similar real Faberge egg:

Mid-Post aside: This might be a good time to apologize to all those lovely Commentors whose Comments I have inadvertently deleted from Posts Past. I am so sorry: I was trying to clear this blog of its 10,000 spam “comments” and I wiped out a few good friends. I will be more careful in future. And in future: if you are a new Commentor, please feel free to Comment here–Comments are the heroin we bloggers blog for–and then email me to let me clear you  as a first-time member of the peanut gallery: vivianswift at yahoo dot comm. Thanks.

This egg was made in 1901 for a wealthy family called Kelch. It’s called the Kelch Apple Blossom Egg. It’s made of  jade with three colors of gold for the tree branches. The little enamelled flowers have diamond centers. I also handled this egg, and it was an absolute delight to thold. It’s the biggest egg that Faberge ever made, yet it still has a gossamar heft. It has a wonderful Art Nouveau look that still communicates the trademark Faberge charm and wit. Last time I saw it, in 1994 (it was a very good year for Faberge eggs) it was being sold in Geneva for $857,000, to an anonymous Russian buyer.

It’s now in The Principality of Liechtenstein, having changed hands at least twice since I’ve seen it.

Now, you may think this egg is not as gorgeous as a more typical Faberge egg.

You might wish this egg had a little more ooomph, like in the Renassance Egg, or the Coach Egg.

And how about that Lily of the Valley Egg???

Plus, some people don’t go for that color of nephrite jade.

That’s why some people at House of Faberge decided to “improve” it.

Like this:

You can also get it in pink.

Now, I know that the readers of this blog are the most tasteful people on earth. So, for the sake of the children who are in danger of going “Ooooooh! I want that!” over House of Faberge eggs, the world needs a list of the objects that best exemplify Good Taste.

Starting with:

Blue jay feathers. (Well, really, any feather is a work of art, but esp. blue jay feathers.)

What else?

This is part two of my coverage of the sale of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels and couture at Christie’s auction house in New York.

This is the part where I tell you why I placed a bid on lot 431.

As you know, there was a lot of interest in Liz’s stuff.

People lined up around the block to check out the treasures on display at Christie’s.

And I was one of them, clutching my $30 entrance ticket and my $30 catalog.

And of all the bangles, baubles, and beads on sale, I zeroed in on lot 431:

It’s a not very spiffy-looking caftan, described in the catalog as:

A PURPLE SILK AND GILT EMBROIDERED CAFTAN WITH A NECKLACE

unlabeled, 1990′s, $300-500 (estimate)

The reason why my heart pounded when I saw this caftan was because I recognized it. I knew this caftan. And it’s not a 1990′s frock.

It’s from 1972. February, 1972. February 25, 1972 to be exact.

How do I know this?

Because I’ve been looking at it for about 20 years, ever since I bought this in 1992:

Yes. This $300-500 caftan is the one Liz wore on the cover of LIFE magazine for a story about her 40th birthday for the Feb 25, 1972 issue.

I saw the mis-attribution in the Christie’s catalog and I hoped nobody else in the world knew what I knew, and I saw my opportunity to bag me an Elizabeth Taylor party dress.

I phoned up Christie’s and I put in a bid for $2,500. (Not all at once. I started out with $1,100, and then thought how rotten I would feel if I lost out on it, and I assessed my future despair and I phoned Christie’s back and put in a bid for $2500. I did not tell Top Cat.)

Lucky for me, this lot was being sold in Liz’s “odds and ends” sale, called on the local news  “Liz’s Leftovers”. This boded well for me, in that it was being stuffed in with a bunch of cheaper goods, after the magnificent jewelry and high fashion sales that had already been held starting on on Monday.

“My” auction started at 10 AM this past Thursday, Dec. 15. Lot 431 came up shortly after 11AM. I’d be checking prices, and her Pucci frocks were soaring in price; estimates at $600-800 for 1970′s-era psychedelic stuff were bid up to $10,000.

Still, I had hope. Lot 431 didn’t have the pizzazz of Pucci and it wasn’t vintage.

Then Lot 431 came up. I watched the auctioneer bid from her book–that is, for me and my “left bid”–for about five seconds. My heart pounded when bidding seemed to slow around $3,000 and I was kicking myself: I shudda raised it another thou!!

Then the bids kept climbing.

The auctioneer brought her hammer down at $9,500. With buyer’s premium, that’s a little over $11,000.

Sigh.

I sent an email to Christie’s offering to chat with the buyer, to give him/her provenance on Lot 431.

By the way, Liz was in a very caftan-y mood when she posed for LIFE magazine in 1972, She and Richard Burton were in Budapest while Burton was filming the movie Bluebeard. She was also photographed wearing Lot 333:

Described as:

AN EVENING TROUSER SUIT OF BOTTLE GREEN VELVET WITH TWO WHITE METAL BELTS

the suit Soledano and 1960s, the belts possible straights Chinese and 19th century, $2,00-3,000 (estimate)

This outfit was sold in the “Couture” sale on the night of Wednesday, Dec. 14. It went for $8,125.

This is how Liz wore it in Budapest:

And there was another caftan, Lot 332:

described as:

AN OTTOMAN WEDDING GOWN OF PURPLE VELVET AND A CLUTCH BAG

the gown, Turkey, late 19th century, $3,000-4,000 (estimate)

These gowns became popular in Turkey in the 1870s when European fashions were adopted by the Turkish court of Ataturk with a view to modernizing the Ottoman Empire.

That text, see above, dear readers, is what we professional writers call “padding”. You non-professionals call it “bullshit”.

This outfit was also sold in the “Couture” sale on the night of Wednesday, Dec. 14. It went for $10,000.

And oh, my, dear readers, this is the outfit to which Liz added a very lovely accessory:

Yes, that’s the Peregrina pearl she’s wearing on her forehead, in its “original” late 19th century chain, before she put it on that Cartier monstrosity. This is how the pearl looked when Richard Burton bought it for $37,000.

On Tuesday, Dec. 13, the Peregrina sold for a little over $11 million.

You know, for about 48 hours I actually thought I had a shot at winning Liz’s LIFE magazine caftan. Life felt really good. Special. Jazzy.

Now Kim Kardashian has $65,000 worth of Liz Taylor bracelets and I have zip.

It’s a scientific fact that our human brains are wired to feel loss very acutely. We are psychologically programed so that loss–however minor–feels much, much worse than [whatever the opposite of "loss" is]. That is why most people are very risk-averse: the happiness of getting something is far outweighed by the pain of losing some other thing.

I deeply appreciated your stories of cringe-worthy typos in your pasts. They really made me feel MUCH better about my slip-up! Thank you!

Now tell me about something that you lost out on, and we will all commiserate. Or, just tell me what the opposite of “loss” is, because it’s not really “found”, right?

It only cost $30 to get a ticket (time-stamped) to see Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels on display at Christie’s auction house in Manhattan. For a nanosecond I hesitated, but then my common sense kicked in and I happily shelled out the smackers for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see some legendary bijoux.

It was pouring rain on Tuesday and I’d mis-judged my timing about how long it would take me to jump off the Oyster Bay train from Long Island on 34th Street and hot foot it uptown to Rockefeller Center to make my 12:30 appointment with Liz’s stuff. I turned the corner from 6th Ave and my heart fell when I saw the line around the block. There was a strict warning from Christie’s that ticket holders should not line up more than 15 minutes before their appointed time but luckily, I was 20 minutes late so I walked to the head of the line and waved my 12:30 ticket and was let right in. I checked my coat and waited behind a velvet rope (guards were doing their best at crowd control, releasing groups of ten at a time).

The place was mobbed with well-dressed ladies of a certain age. In my head ladies of a certain polish always look older than me, even if they are only in their 50s (like me), but I think I was the exact demographic of this crowd. I skipped the handbags and the shoes on display, and I moseyed through the dresses on view (they were wonderful), but I came for the jewels.

I came for this:

The  brooch that Ms. Taylor bought in 1987 from the estate of the Duchess of Windsor. It’s the three plumes of the Prince of Wales, and of course since Richard Burton was Welsh well, you know, Ms. Liz had to have it. She paid $565,000 for it, and it’s now estimated at $400-$600,000. It will go for at least twice that. By the way, it looks HUGE in person.

Mike Todd gave her this tiara:

From what I overheard, most of the ladies only wanted to see stuff that Richard Burton had given Ms. Liz, like this Bulgari emerald necklace:

And the 33-carat diamond ring, which used to be called the Krupp Diamond but is now the Taylor-Burton diamond. In person, this stone doesn’t look all that huge. It’s BIG, but not paper-weight sized. They must have got a small hand-model for this shot:

‘I wanted to see the Taj Mahal Diamond that Burton gave Ms. Liz just after she became a grandmother at age 40:

But the thing I MOST wanted to see was the Peregrina Pearl, the natural pearl found in the 16th century in Panamanian waters by Spanish conquistadors:

That’s a Cartier necklace that Ms. Liz commissioned in  the 1980s — it’s ugly, but does not diminish the presence of The Pearl — which is HUGE in person (much biggger  than I expected it to be):

The very first piece of writing that I ever got published was an article about the history of the Peregrina that I wrote for a fine little antique jewelry magazine in 1993. So the Peregrina looms large in my legend, and I’ve waited lo these many years to SEE it.

I’ve known it only from photographs:

And from paintings of its original  owner:

Mary Tudor was painted many, many times wearing the Peregrina, as were several other Queens of Spain (mostly notable by Velazquez). But Mary had it first; the English Queen was the first wife of Phillip of Spain, who took the pearl back when she died and kept it in the Spanish Crown Jewels until sometime around the time Napoleon came traipsing through and the pearl somehow disappeared from Spanish coffers. It reappeared on a long platinum chain, worn by the Marquess of Abercorn, at the turn of the 20th century.

It was this English family who put the pearl up for auction in 1969 in New York, where Richard Burton bought it for $37,000 amidst much controversy. Some titled Spanish lady claimed that she had  the Peregrina, which she didn’t; and when her ruse was revealed there was some clamour that a Hollywood tart shouldn’t be able to own a Spanish crown jewel.

In my opinion, Ms. Liz had much more class than all the Spanish queens put together, who were for the most part a rough bunch. Even today, Spanish nobility is a dicey prospect:

This is te 85-year-old Duchess of Alba, a.k.a Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva(!!) who in August of this year, 2011, married 61-year-old, more succinctly-named Alfonso Diez, a social security civil servant who runs a PR business on the side. In order to hush the naysayers, the Duchess “gave away” $5 billion to her kids and grandkids. Though she’s giving it all up, she’ll have plenty of lovely places to visit should she miss the luxe life: Each of her six children and eight grandchildren has been given a palace and a chunk of the thousands of acres of Spanish countryside that she controls.

If I were the Peregrina, I’d much rather be with Liz.

It took me an hour to wander through the various galleries at Christie’s, in a strictly controlled one-way-only flow, before I got to the last room, a small alcove, where the Peregrina was in a case with only a small “matching” set of natural pearl earrings. I hung around it for a quarter of an hour. Even though the pearl was everything I though tit would be: magnificent, subtle, important, embodied with its history and my imagination, etc., I know this about me: I’m not one of those people who can stare at an object, no matter how supernaturally beautiful or spiritually significant, for an hour. I just run out of things to think and feel after fifteen minutes.

But knowing that I would never be so close to this perfect pearl again, I forced myself to spend another ten minutes in the gallery, to get my money’s worth. ha ha. I’m glad that I was alone, though, and didn’t have to discuss the experience with anyone.

Although I corrected some ladies who glanced at the pearl and one told the other, NO, I don’t think Burton gave this to her. OH, yes he did, I said, and he loved it so much that he wanted to research it and write a book about it! I mentioned the 1969 sale and the $37,000 price tag. I tried not to go on too long. They did thank me though, and took a closer look at it, but these days a pearl doesn’t hold up (like it used to) against the glitter of diamonds.

The Peregrina is estimated to go for $2-3 million. I will bet right now that it goes for closer to 5, and I hope against hope that it stays in sight in the Western world, and doesn’t disappear into the Middle East.

Well, as we all know, perfection only exists in places like the Peregrina.

I sent  out my first batch of C.H.K.S. cards on Wednesday morning, and on Wednesday afternoon I discovered that  my C.H.K.S. message had a typo in it. My blood froze for a mo when the previously unseen typo pierced my eye, and then it pounded red hot in my ears. that’s how much typos in print upset me. But what can you do? At least it’s not as bad as the first year I sent out C.H.K.S. cards with the word “solstice” misspelled.

Still. I’m sorry for the typo, which I corrected for the second batch of cards, and because of which I will now lie awake at  night from now until pub date (April 2012) hoping that the six editors who sent over the manuscript for the Damn France Book trapped each and every snotty little typo before the book is set loose in the world.

I was reading Michael Korda’s memoir about pubishing (I forget the title) and Michael Korda is the Top Dog, Head Honcho of Simon and Schuster, a millon-dollar best sellerr of varous memoirs and novels for the house. And in his book, I read that he carried home from Cartier a gift for his wife in the jeweler’s distinctive “light blue box”. And as we all know, Cartier’s boxes are blood red; Tiffany is famous for its light blue box.

Jeeze, I thought. You mean to tell me that they couldn’t get an editor with enough on the ball to catch that for Michael Korda????

Have any of you ever caught a huge faux pasin print? Besides my stuff, that is–plase tell me. I need to feel a little less stupid today.