This Is What Happens When a Legendary Jewelry Species Evolves
Charles Lewis Tiffany was a pioneer of the imagination from the start. He began offering clients rare Japanese imports back in 1837, when that was all but unheard of—Commodore Perry didn’t “open” Japan until 1853. It’s a moment in the Tiffany timeline that comes full circle this spring, as the house opens the “Tiffany Wonder” exhibit in Tokyo (through June 23 at the Tokyo Node Gallery). Charles’s son Louis Comfort continued the family tradition of daring. Note the wildness of the inspiration in those Tiffany lamps, the exquisite strangeness of his Medusa pendant (on view in Tokyo).
So, when Tiffany chairman Walter Hoving decided in 1956 to bring a Frenchman named Jean Schlumberger—who began his career making clips out of Meissen porcelain flowers he scavenged from Paris flea markets and crafting wild buttons for Elsa Schiaparelli—into the Tiffany fold, he was continuing a long-standing tradition.
Those Bird on a Rock lapel pins you’ve seen on everyone from Odell Beckham Jr. to Jeremy Allen White are iconic Schlumberger. (It was said he was inspired by a cockatoo he spotted outside his home in Guadeloupe.) He created the first one for his great friend and patron Bunny Mellon in 1965. It was a canary and white diamond bird with an emerald eye atop a cabochon lapis rock. (It will also be on view in Tokyo, on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, to which Mellon donated her extensive Schlumberger collection. She also purchased seven other Bird on a Rock brooches, likely as gifts for friends and family.)
How does a house make sure a piece with such a foothold in jewelry history—and with such a strong presence in the current market—continues to evolve? How does it stoke the collector’s desire?
It sets the bird free. Or, to be more specific, it sets it on a 47-carat black opal, or a 66-carat champagne-yellow zircon, or a 56-carat blue tourmaline. And then, for the first time, lets its jewelry flag really fly, exploring the full palette of stones to capture the design’s wit and whimsy, studding the bird’s body with pearls, pink and blue sapphires, turquoise, amethyst, and paillonné enamel, a signature of Schlumberger, who believed in the beauty of making “everything look as if it were growing, uneven, organic…to capture the irregularity of nature.”
This new capsule high jewelry collection, called Rainbow Bird on a Rock, brings the bird to life in full living color with the help of aquamarines and spessartines, tsavorites and tanzanites, blue tourmalines and fire opals. The stones animate it in such a way that, as you’re admiring the craftsmanship, you might almost expect the bird to wink at you.
This story appears in the May 2024 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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