Tiffany & Co. deep dives with ocean-themed dedication to Schlumberger
The American blue chip jeweller reimagines the aquatic imaginings of star designer Jean Schlumberger.
A handwritten note, illustrated with pink and blue shells, gives many a clue into legendary Tiffany & Co. jewellery designer Jean Schlumberger, his relationship with the women who wore his designs and his lifetime love of the ocean.
“A few shells before I go to the beaches with you. So much love, Johnny.”
The note, written by Schlumberger, was addressed to Rachel Lambert, or Bunny Mellon as she was better known, the celebrated philanthropist, socialite and self-taught gardener of such repute that President John F. Kennedy asked her to redesign the White House Rose Garden.
Upon her death Mellon – who by the way, gardened in custom Balenciaga and later, Givenchy – donated 142 Schlumberger pieces to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It remains the largest public collection of the jewellery designer’s pieces. Mellon wanted them to be viewed collectively, as the works of art she believed them to be.
But back to the ocean. Schlumberger once made Mellon, his close friend and best patron, an opal and garnet jellyfish brooch, La Meduse, as a consolation when she was stung by one while swimming in Antigua.
Victoria Reynolds, chief gemmologist at Tiffany & Co. says the pair deeply admired one other. They also were both very private people. As Reynolds points out, Schlumberger rarely spoke about his work. He wanted it to speak for itself. Still, his famous quote about his design philosophy – that he tried “to make everything look as if it were growing, uneven, at random, organic, in motion”, fits with Mellon’s own philosophies. She always said that with her gardens and her homes, “nothing should be noticed”. Yet her guests never forgot their visit.
But achieving this type of organic and aesthetic harmoniousness is always much harder than it seems. “Design is about the organic flow of how things go. And you don’t want one thing standing out. But by nothing standing out, everything has to be excellent. Right? It’s all got to work, which is so, so difficult,” says Reynolds of Mellon’s philosophy.
Both had the kind of taste and self-assurance that allows for true originality: Mellon with her gardens, Schlumberger first with the creations he made from found objects in Parisian flea markets. The very ones that caught the eye of Surrealist designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who commissioned him to make fish buttons and plumed hats for her winter 1937 collection. Schlumberger joined Tiffany & Co. in 1956.
“I think [Mellon’s] taste, which was, of course, extraordinary – she was, if not the, certainly one of the great taste-setters of her time, influencing Jackie Kennedy Onassis and really, myriad very, very important women – I think that was not lost on him,” says Reynolds. “But I think they had a shared appreciation for each other. They were both great designers. She admired him. He admired her. And I think there was a quiet confidence that they both had in each other … and which is why he designed for her more than anybody else.
“She left [her collection of Schlumberger pieces] very specifically so that it really could be his legacy as well as her legacy.”
The personal note was included as part of an exhibition of Schlumberger pieces curated by Tiffany & Co. in its The Landmark flagship on Fifth Avenue, New York to celebrate the latest chapter of its Blue Book collection, 2025’s Sea of Wonder. The new collection explores Schlumberger’s fascination with the ocean and its wondrous creatures and Reynolds believes that this is the best yet from Tiffany & Co. chief artistic officer for high jewellery and jewellery, Nathalie Verdeille.
“With the Sea of Wonder collection, we are charting new paths within the legacy left by Jean Schlumberger, taking a more abstract approach,” says Verdeille, whom WISH meets at The Landmark flagship. Schlumberger – that rare designer who still has dozens of designs from 50, 60 and even 70 years ago still in production – is the inspiration. But it’s not a direct homage.
“Rather than revisiting his iconic pieces directly, we aim to embrace his philosophy and poetic vision, building upon his work to create an artistic movement at Tiffany that captures the spirit of Schlumberger’s aesthetic. If I were to distil this movement into a single idea, it would be the sea and its mysteries as an endless source of inspiration, explored through dynamic volumes and textures that suggest movement.”
The collection is broken into chapters of Ocean Flora, Seahorse, Sea Turtle, Starfish, Urchin and Wave, and throughout there is a feeling for texture. It is a signature for Schlumberger, the son of textile manufacturers in France’s Alsace region, whose use of a sort of gold thread in many of his pieces nods to this history.
Throughout the collection are many elements of surprise, such as incredible, unexpected gemstones and colour combinations, and a certain feeling for whimsy. For why can’t a Seahorse brooch be high jewellery? Or the spikiness of the anemone, a fascination for Schlumberger, be crafted in the paillonné enamel technique he used for the bracelets that were so beloved by Jacqueline Kennedy that they became known as the Jackie bracelet? Mellon never removed hers either, wearing it to garden, of course, and loving it more with every ding. Whimsy, after all, was another firmly held value of Schlumberger’s.
“I think it’s always been very important to Tiffany over the years. Whether it was [Tiffany designer, George] Paulding Farnham, Louis Comfort Tiffany [son of Tiffany founder Charles Lewis Tiffany], Schlumberger. But Schlumberger more than anybody, that wit, the whimsy was always very important to him,” says Reynolds. “High jewellery is serious business, but when you can have a beautiful, cheeky little turtle like that, everybody fell in love with both of those turtles. And they’re cute, but they are beautiful examples of high jewellery. And that is a very, very hard thing to balance.”
This whimsy belies the incredibly complicated techniques that underpin each piece. Such as that charming sea turtle brooch, transformable into a pendant and which utilised the skills of the Tiffany & Co. craftspeople in goldsmithing, gem setting and engraving. The piece took 900 hours to complete.
Verdeille felt a particular affinity with the sea creature. “The sea turtle – a creature that appears throughout Ocean Flora and Wave – was a particularly powerful source of inspiration,” she says.
“It became a metaphor for duality: softness and strength, vulnerability and mystery. Translating that into jewellery meant working with layered materials, fluid settings, and gemstones like opal and chalcedony that seem to glow from within.”
The Seahorse chapter is another to brim with wit, as well as virtuosity. Such as the reimagining of a famous 1968 Schlumberger design that combined carved moonstones with zircons – no mean feat. The necklace in this chapter, says Reynolds, was one of the most challenging pieces in the entire collection.
“The Seahorse necklace with the fluted moonstones; very, very, very difficult piece to make. I mean, super difficult. And so understanding what went into it, and we always say this, if the finished result is worth it, then it’s worth all of the anxiety and the re-dos and the recutting. And that is a great example of something that was so worth it. What we did with cutting those moonstones, most other high jewellery houses wouldn’t have touched,” says Reynolds. “There’s a reason you don’t see zircons and moonstones, because it’s very hard to make those two play together in a way that is harmonious, organic, uniform and transcending of the design.”
The incredible gemstones sourced by Reynolds are on full display in the Blue Book 2025 collection, such as the electric-blueish-green cuprian tourmalines set in the supple and undulating Wave necklace; the Zambian emeralds and six-carat ruby in the Starfish ring – this one a particular favourite for the gemmologist, in part because she says it speaks to Verdeille’s bold designs and tastes.
“It was the way the starfish wrapped around your finger and then sort of came up. And the stone was extraordinary. It’s a combination of the gold, the texture, and it was very Schlumberger, but it was very Nathalie. If you know Nathalie, she likes wearing pieces in a bold way. And these rubies were some of the first that we picked together about three years ago,” Reynolds says.
Boldness is a quality Schlumberger admired also, in design and also in the women who wore his pieces. This coterie of bold women included the likes of Babe Paley, the queen bee of Truman Capote’s “Swans”, Lauren Bacall and inimitable Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, another particularly good client of Schlumberger. Vreeland, another to call the designer “Johnny”, once said his work, “Schlumberger lights up the whole room”.
“One of [his] quotes says, ‘I cannot imagine my jewellery being worn by timid women’,” says Reynolds with a smile. “I’m paraphrasing that, but I think it was important to him. He saw his jewellery as being very powerful and he wanted it to be worn by women who had a point of view. And that point of view might not have been about power, but it was not about shrinking violets. And indeed, if I look at our current clients who are purchasing Schlumberger, they are very strong personalities. And that doesn’t mean they’re loud … but it means that they’re very confident. It means they have great style and wearing his jewellery is about styling it and how you style it and I think he loved that as well.”
One Schlumberger piece to particularly resonate with clients of now is the Bird on a Rock. It made its debut as a brooch in 1965. Schlumberger is said to have presented the creation to Tiffany’s then chairman Walter Hoving, the man who hired both Schlumberger and Elsa Peretti. Hoving roared with laughter and then ordered more. It’s since found new homes in Tiffany designs, such as nestled inside new timepieces launched this year, on pendants and rings and perched atop new gemstones such as opals and pearls. Lately it’s been worn in various guises by the likes of performer Lady Gaga and actors Jeremy Allen White, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt. Bunny Mellon, by the way, bought one of the first Bird on a Rock brooches, hers sitting atop a cabochon of lapis lazuli with yellow and white diamonds.
“It’s about the whimsy of that little bird. It’s a Schlumberger bird. It’s not a cockatoo. It’s not a parrot … there’s no bird that has a little pineapple on their head. It’s got the little fan around it. It’s a fashionista bird. It’s a cheeky bird. And I think part of it is that I can take the most exceptional opal [or] the most important gemstone in the world, you put it on that bird and all of a sudden, it transforms. It is as important, if not more so, but it’s sort of putting a crown on a jewel. It is validating that that jewel is good enough to be in a Bird on a Rock,” says Reynolds of its charm.
Anthony Ledru, chief executive and president of Tiffany & Co., particularly likes the Bird on a Rock, says Reynolds, pointing to his vision for the jewellery house to expand the little bird’s world view.
How people wear jewellery now is what drives Ledru, who says high jewellery has never been more important to Tiffany & Co..
“For over 180 years, Tiffany high jewellery has exemplified exquisite beauty, creative excellence and the most extraordinary gemstones in the world. We have the advantage of looking to our archives and our rich heritage for inspiration, to reinvent and reinterpret designs for the modern world,” Ledru says.
“Tiffany & Co.’s willingness to take risks, unmatched craftsmanship and artistry is what sets us apart.”
The new Blue Book collection debuted in New York with a gala dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Guests bathed in the glow of the Garden Landscape stained-glass window that was designed by Agnes Northrop in the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany and acquired by the Met in 2023.
Friend of the house Anya Taylor-Joy wound her arm behind her back in the most elegant fashion as she chatted animatedly to actor Zoey Deutch. Past Lives star Greta Lee was the essence of chic in an ivory Loewe column while Oscar winner Mikey Madison was a vision in a cloud of yellow tulle.
The blue-chip American jeweller then brought out singer Alicia Keys, who electrified the room with a performance that included – naturally – Empire State of Mind. It was, like a Schlumberger design that remains as relevant now as it ever was, a moment that only Tiffany & Co. could pull off.
This story is from the August issue of WISH.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout