“Right now, Tiffany Co is having a major colour renaissance,” says Christopher Young, vice-president and creative director of Tiffany patrimony and global creative visual merchandising. We’re catching up, post the brand’s glittering Blue Book Gala in New York, to discuss a new series of its enamel fine jewellery collection: hoop earrings and chunky rings in the brand’s signature robin’s egg blue hue and accented with 18-carat gold foil crosshatching, which draw on legendary jewellery designer Jean Schlumberger’s 1962 creations for the house.
US philanthropist and horticulturist Bunny Mellon best summed up the allure of those original pieces in the December 1965 issue of American . Photographed standing at a window of her home in Upperville, Virginia, it isn’t the then 55-year-old’s fabulous “small forest” of potted miniature herb trees that catch the eye, rather her ultramarine paillonné enamel bracelet.
A longtime confidante of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the designer of John F Kennedy’s White House Rose Garden, Mellon met Schlumberger in 1954. The high-society pair immediately hit it off, owing to a mutual love of the natural world. The duo weren’t interested in honed horticultural perfection; they revelled in irregularity – whether Schlumberger was suspending diamond-swathed acorn charms from bracelets or positioning tropical birds on top of chunks of citrine and kunzite. Mellon, meanwhile, tended to her rosemary and myrtle in Balenciaga haute couture, her numerous enamel bracelets becoming weathered over time. “Those pieces have the most love to them,” says Young. “You can see they were worn day after day after day.”
Pieces from the Tiffany Blue Book, 1970.
“It was really Schlum who revived enamel, a 19th-century art we hadn’t seen at all in the 20th century,” Diana Vreeland wrote in her foreword to Franco Maria Ricci’s 1976 monograph about Schlumberger. The appeal of the glittering luminosity of the material has now pooled into the present day, thanks to an increased interest in personality-led designs. Van Cleef Arpels’s classic Alhambra creations have been reimagined in a raspberry hue; collectors are seeking out watches with hard-stone dials in malachite and pink jasper, and brides are saying “I do” to engagement rings with vivid precious stones. Tiffany Co.’s HardWear line has also had a vibrant update: its chain-link pieces are interlocked with smooth turquoise beads, inspired by an archival lapis lazuli necklace also worn by Mellon.
Renowned for her generosity, Mellon gifted her beloved enamel bracelets to everyone from close friend Jackie O to her manicurist. Philanthropist, first lady or fine jewellery fan, they’ll certainly lend some glamour to your own gardening sessions.
Gold and paillonné enamel ring, price on request, Tiffany & Co.
T|Tiffany & Co. Studio