In 1837, in a time when New York City saw dynamic growth, extravagant taste and golden opportunities, twenty-five-year-old Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young opened a “stationery and fancy goods” store with a $1,000 advance from Tiffany’s father.

On their way to the new emporium at 259 Broadway, fashionable ladies in silks, satins and beribboned bonnets faced a gauntlet of narrow streets teeming with horses and carriages and the hurly-burly of city life. At Tiffany & Co. they discovered a newly emerging “American style” that departed from the European design aesthetic rooted in religious and ceremonial patterns.

The young entrepreneurs were inspired by the natural world, which they interpreted in exquisite patterns of simplicity, harmony and clarity. These became the hallmarks of Tiffany design, first in silver hollowware and flatware, and later in jewellery. This singular style quickly established Tiffany & Co. as the arbiter of taste, elegance and sophistication, which it still is today.The Tiffany & Co. silver studio, where apprentices were encouraged to observe and sketch nature, was the first American school of design.

Tiffany first achieved international recognition at the Paris Exposition Uni-verselle in 1867, when, for the first time, an American design house was awarded the grand prize for silver craftsmanship. By 1870 Tiffany & Co. had become America’s premier purveyor of jewels and timepieces as well as luxury table, personal, and household accessories, with customers including prominent figures such as President Lincoln. At the turn of the century the company had more than one thousand employees and branches in London, Paris, and Geneva.

In 1882 President Chester Arthur invited Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of the founder, to redecorate the White House and by 1900 the younger Tiffany was a recognized world leader in the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements. In 1902 he became Tiffany’s first director of design.

Tiffany designs captured the spirit of the times from the extravagance of the 1920s to the modernism of the 1930s and the aerodynamic age of the 1940s and 1950s. Tiffany china set the stage for White House dinners and Tiffany jewels accented the elegant clothes of the world’s most glamorous women.

From its founding, Tiffany & Co. has been renowned as a purveyor of the finest pearls, and has incorporated these stones in its fine jewellery. Pearls also played an important role in the unprecedented recognition Tiffany received at the great world fairs during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

For much of Tiffany’s history, pearl necklaces were the most expensive jewels in the company’s collections. By the end of the nineteenth century, Tiffany was selling a wealth of waist-length pearl strands to the fashionable women of America.

Hand-selected by the company’s gemmological experts and precisely matched for size and colour. Tiffany’s pearls are recognized for their beautiful shapes, exquisite lustre and superior nacre thickness. Today the company incorporates several kinds of pearls in its jewellery designs, including South Seas pearls.

Over the past two centuries, Tiffany has built an international reputationas the ultimate source for special gifts, wrapped in the signature Tiffany Blue Box® which symbolizes the rich heritage that Tiffany & Co. has enjoyed as one of America’s great institutions.

TIFFANY & CO.
Fifth Avenue at 57th Street
New York, New York 10022
U.S.A.
Tel: +1 212 755 8000
www.tiffany.com