Louis Comfort Tiffany

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) was already an experienced and successful painter, interior designer, glassmaker and enamellist when he first turned his efforts to jewelry making in 1902. Although he was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder and president of Tiffany & Co., which was the most successful and influential jewelry firm in America at the time, he waited until after his father’s death to begin his first experiments in jewelry design. It is possible his new position as vice president gave him the confidence to enter what he had previously considered his father’s province. 

Tiffany established a new jewelry division within his personal company, Tiffany Furnaces, and appointed Julia Munson, a young designer who worked in his enamels branch, head of department. The two began to collaborate on a series of innovative jewels, the first group of which were exhibited to great acclaim at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Tiffany took a lead role in the design process, with Munson creating technical drawings and coordinating sourcing and production. Early pieces drew heavily on botanical motifs, portraying wildflowers, leaves and berries in a naturalistic style embellished with enamel and semiprecious gemstones. Critics drew favorable comparisons to contemporary French Art Nouveau jewelers such as René Lalique, indicating that Tiffany’s interpretations were less rarified and stylized than Lalique’s and reflected a truly individual artistic vision. 

Louis Comfort Tiffany was always careful to draw a distinction between the jewelry he designed, which he called “artistic jewelry”, and the regular production of Tiffany & Co. Even after 1907, when the Tiffany Furnaces jewelry department was officially acquired by Tiffany & Co., his pieces continued to be listed separately in company catalogues and sold in a dedicated space within the Tiffany & Co. store, alongside his glass and other decorative arts productions. A primary feature of the Artistic Jewelry was the guarantee that each piece was unique and would not be replicated. The jewels privileged color and artistic effect over intrinsic value and tended to feature stones such as opals, moonstones, Montana sapphires and demantoid garnets that were notable for their distinctive colors and the way they played with light. After the initial proliferation of botanical themes, Tiffany’s jewels began to increasingly draw inspiration from Etruscan, Islamic and Egyptian sources. 

Between 1902 and 1907 it is believed Tiffany and Munson produced less than 400 pieces of jewelry. Each was hand-crafted in the Tiffany Furnaces workshops. These pieces can be distinguished from those created after 1907 by the more hand-wrought quality of the jewels and the use of the facsimile signature “Louis Comfort Tiffany” or “Louis Comfort Tiffany, Artist” engraved on each piece. Lot 62 is an extremely rare example of one of these early jewels. The links are composed of wire hand bent into lobed and volute shapes and set with painterly opal cabochons reminiscent of Tiffany’s glass, each spiral set with a sparkling acid-green demantoid garnet. The design recalls ancient Greco-Roman and Celtic artifacts, with its simple, powerful forms.