Tiffany & Co.’s Blue Book collection includes tribute to French designer Jean Schlumberger
French jeweller Jean Schlumberger’s creations were worn by the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy. Now Tiffany & Co. has reimagined some of them in a new collection.
In its 184-year history, only four jewellers in the world have been allowed to sign their pieces for American luxury company Tiffany & Co.: fashion designer Paloma Picasso, architect Frank Gehry, designer/model Elsa Peretti, and French jeweller Jean Schlumberger.
Schlumberger, an extraordinary artist who was never formally trained, produced some of Tiffany & Co.’s most famous works, worn by style icons such as Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. “Some women want to look expensive but I would prefer to have them look precious,” he told a journalist in 1956 just after he was appointed as vice-president by then Tiffany & Co. president Walter Hoving and given his own department in which to work his magic.
The Frenchman went on to create hundreds of pieces over a 30-year partnership with the American jeweller, and 50 of them have been reimagined as part of Tiffany & Co.’s 500-piece 2021 Blue Book high jewellery collection.
Schlumberger was born in Mulhouse, near the Swiss and German borders, in 1907 to a family of textile manufacturers. Despite drawing from an early age, he was dissuaded by his parents from going into the creative arts and pressured to study finance. He worked at a bank in Berlin, before finding his way back to Paris and his artistic endeavours. As he had no money he would scour the Paris flea markets for materials to make his jewellery, and used everything from coloured glass to Victorian-era cherubs. One day he came across porcelain flowers on an old chandelier and turned them into clips for his very fashionable friends. They were a hit and Schlumberger’s career was born.
“Jean Schlumberger was the single greatest force in the creation of fashion jewellery,” wrote John Loring, design director of Tiffany & Co. for more than 20 years, in his book on the 170th anniversary of the legendary American luxury house. “[It was a] category that was not born out of the luxuries and glamour of an art-nurturing period of boundless prosperity (the Roaring Twenties) but rather out of the necessities of a period of great hardship (the Great Depression of the thirties).
“In jewellery, before Schlumberger, there was a choice between real precious stones and pearl jewellery for those who could afford it, and paste copies for those who could not. The Paris fashion world had need of a totally new and affordable alternative to precious gems, and Jean Schlumberger was the man with the imagination, vision, wit, stylishness and eye for glamour to answer them.”
The artist went on to create buttons for French fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s, before settling in New York and opening his own store. He created hat pins, strappy heeled sandals, and clips of jewelled birds and sea creatures that were seen on the most fashionable women in New York City. The partnership between Schlumberger and Tiffany & Co. allowed him to experiment with real jewels and precious gems from around the world. His creativity was finally unfettered.
“Schlumberger’s creative spirit blossomed at Tiffany & Co. into the most imaginative and stylish collections the world of jewellery and fashion has ever seen,” wrote Loring. The designer was inspired by flora and fauna, and had a love of things from under the sea (fish, jellyfish, coral and even mermaids). “I try to make everything look as it were growing, uneven, at random, organic and in motion,” he once explained. “I want to capture the irregularity of the universe.”
One of the first tasks Schlumberger was given by Tiffany & Co, was to design a high jewellery setting for the famous Tiffany Diamond, a 128.5 carat yellow diamond bought by Charles L. Tiffany in 1878 for $US18,000 after it was discovered in South Africa. Schlumberger designed a Bird-on-a-Rock clip for the piece, as well as a stunning diamond necklace called Ribbons in 1960 that actress Audrey Hepburn later wore it in publicity shots for the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
For the 2021 high jewellery collection Colours of Nature, artisans at Tiffany & Co. used drawings to create 50 pieces that pay tribute to the work of Schlumberger. There are necklaces inspired by flowers, including one spectacular piece called Vrille – French for tendril – that includes more than 100 carats worth of diamonds and rubellites. Sea anemones, spiky starfish, fish and shells – all favourites of Schlumberger – are also featured in earrings, brooches and bracelets.
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