Famous Jewellers – Tiffany & Co

By John Tidball

The Tiffany story begins in 1837, when Charles Lewis Tiffany and John F. Young opened Tiffany & Young, on Broadway in New York. The store sold a variety of merchandise, including stationery and costume jewelry. The now world-famous Tiffany Blue was soon adopted as part of their branding and used for bags and boxes. In 1841 another partner, J. L. Ellis, joined the company, and the store became Tiffany, Young & Ellis.

The new store sold a wider range of goods, including stationery, silverware, watches and clocks, ornaments perfumes and various other sundries. In 1845 the first Tiffany catalogue was published. In 1853, Tiffany bought out his partners, and the firm became Tiffany & Co.

Charles Tiffany was a very astute businessman, and new company went from strength to strength. In 1868 a new branch was opened in London and the company was incorporated, with Tiffany as president and treasurer. After winning the gold medal for jewellery and the Grand Prize for silverware at the Paris Exposition of 1878, Tiffany & Co fast became one of the most sought-after jewellers and silversmiths in the world, catering at once to the crowned heads of Europe and to nouveau riche Americans, who had become wealthy in the wake of the Civil War. In the same year Charles Tiffany purchased and had cut the famous Tiffany Diamond, a 128.5 carat flawless canary yellow diamond, which is still held by the New York store to this day.

In 1886 the Tiffany & Co introduced the Tiffany setting, in which a solitaire diamond is held by six claws mounted above the ring shank, thus allowing a maximum of light to pass through the diamond’s pavilion facets. The modern engagement ring was born.

Unlike the family dynasties of Cartier and Bulgari, Charles Tiffany was the only Tiffany to run the company. When he died in 1902, leaving an estate estimated at $35 million, his only heir was Louis Comfort Tiffany, his eldest son, who made jewelry for Tiffany’s but was better known for his work in Art Nouveau stained glass.

In 1905 the store moved into new premises at Fifth Avenue and 37th Street, and two years later John C. Moore, the great-grandson of a silversmith who had supplied Tiffany in the early days, became president of Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany’s sales volume rose steadily during the first three decades of the 20th century, but after the 1929 stock market crash even the rich cut back on luxury goods. During the ten years which followed, Tiffany’s sales fell dramatically, and by 1940 the company was having to dip into its reserves just to stay in business. The London store was closed, and Tiffany’s moved uptown for the sixth and last time, to the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, where it built a $2.5 million seven-story Art Deco building. Louis de B. Moore succeeded his father as president in the same year.

It was during the 1950s that the Tiffany name became known throughout the world, thanks to Truman Capote’s novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The success of the film of the same name starring Audrey Hepburn, in which she wears a Tiffany Diamond necklace, further enhanced the company’s reputation.

During the remainder of the 20th century, Tiffany & Co enjoyed mixed fortunes. Brilliant jewellery designs from the likes of Jean Schlumberger, Elsa Peretti, Angela Cummings, and Paloma Picasso, and commissions from the rich and powerful were some of the highlights, offset by some poor management decisions which saw the company taken over for several years by Avon Products Inc., the world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of cosmetics and costume jewellery.

Tiffany’s upmarket image suffered under the new regime, but another buyout in the mid 1980s got the company back onto a more even keel. Since the late 1980s and to the present day, a succession of brilliant new designs, combined with shrewd marketing decisions, have seen Tiffany & Co maintain its standing among the world’s top jewellery houses.

My websites are offline at present and links will be restored as soon as possible. John Tidball

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