Tiffany & Co: A History of the First American Luxury House

In 1886, the jewellers Tiffany & Co of New York introduced a new method of mounting a diamond solitaire in an engagement ring. The diamond was held in place by six platinum prongs that lifted it above the band, exposing the maximum surface area of the stone to light and making the diamond appear as large and as brilliant as possible. The setting was, at the time, a technical innovation. Previous mounting methods had partially or fully enclosed the diamond in metal, restricting how it caught the light. The new six-prong solitaire allowed the stone itself to be the design.

The setting was launched as the Tiffany Setting. One hundred and forty years later, it is the design of the modern engagement ring. The single most-photographed diamond ring in the world is in this setting. The default engagement ring sold by every major American retailer is in this setting. The visual template of "engagement ring" in popular culture is this setting. Tiffany's six-prong solitaire is the engagement ring.

What I find worth saying about Tiffany & Co, and the reason a history of this firm is worth writing alongside the Cartier history that pairs with it, is that Tiffany is the first American luxury house in the proper sense and the firm that defined how mass-market American luxury would operate for almost two centuries. Where Cartier's twentieth century was the story of an aristocratic Paris house operating across three world capitals, Tiffany's was the story of an American merchant democracy in luxury form. The 1886 Tiffany Setting was the technical embodiment of that democracy: a method of mounting diamonds that made the stone itself the focus, that worked at every price point from modest to spectacular, and that scaled to American mass production in a way no European setting tradition had managed. Tiffany invented, in 1886, the engagement ring as we know it.

This is the story of how Tiffany got there and what it has done since.

The founding

Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812 to 1902) and John B. Young opened Tiffany & Young on 18 September 1837 at 259 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, with one thousand dollars borrowed from Charles's father, a Connecticut cotton mill owner. The shop was described in its founding advertisements as a "stationery and fancy goods emporium," selling combs, fans, umbrellas, costume jewellery, and small luxury imports.

The 1837 founding moment is worth noting for one historical reason. 1837 was the year of the Panic of 1837, the financial crisis that triggered a seven-year American depression. Charles Lewis Tiffany opened a luxury goods store in Manhattan during the worst financial crisis the United States had yet experienced. The first weeks of business produced takings of approximately four dollars and ninety-eight cents. The store survived because Tiffany understood, even at the founding, that a luxury market existed in America that was distinct from the European luxury trade and that could be served by an American firm operating at scale.

The firm became Tiffany, Young, and Ellis in 1841 when J. L. Ellis joined as a partner, and Tiffany & Co. in 1853 when Charles bought out the other partners and assumed sole ownership of the business. The 1853 reorganisation marks the beginning of the company in its modern form.

The Charles Lewis Tiffany years

Across the second half of the nineteenth century, Charles Lewis Tiffany built the firm through a series of commercial and product innovations that established the brand's positioning.

The 1845 Blue Book. The first Tiffany Blue Book was a mail-order catalogue of luxury goods, distributed to customers across the United States. The catalogue allowed Tiffany to sell beyond the New York walk-in trade and reach the wealthy classes of the rapidly expanding American cities. The Blue Book continues to be published annually and is now in its 181st edition.

The 1848 French crown jewels acquisition. In the political instability following the 1848 revolution in France, much of the French royal jewellery collection was sold off. Tiffany bought aggressively from these sales, acquiring stones that included pieces from the personal collection of Marie Antoinette. The acquisitions established Tiffany as a major buyer in the international stone market and gave the firm access to European royal jewellery that no other American retailer had.

The 1851 sterling silver standard. Tiffany became the first American retailer to adopt the English sterling silver standard (.925 silver content) rather than the lower-quality American coin silver standard then prevailing. The decision substantially raised the perceived quality of Tiffany silver and produced commercial advantage that compounded over the following decades.

The 1853 Atlas clock. A nine-foot bronze Atlas figure holding a clock was installed above the Tiffany flagship and has remained outside every subsequent Tiffany Fifth Avenue location. The Atlas clock has become, after the Blue Box, the firm's most-recognised visual emblem.

The 1877 Tiffany Diamond. Tiffany acquired a 287.42-carat fancy yellow diamond from the Kimberley mines in South Africa. The stone was cut down to 128.54 carats with 82 facets (an unusual number for diamond cutting at the time, designed by the Tiffany Vice-President George Frederick Kunz to maximise brilliance). The Tiffany Diamond has remained in the company's possession for nearly 150 years and is one of the most famous coloured diamonds in the world.

By Charles Lewis Tiffany's death in 1902, the firm had transitioned from the modest 1837 stationery and fancy goods emporium to one of the dominant American luxury houses, supplying jewellery to American Gilded Age dynasties and competing seriously with the European houses for the high-end American trade.

The Tiffany Setting

The 1886 introduction of the Tiffany Setting is the single most commercially significant moment in modern engagement ring history. The technical innovation was the six-platinum-prong solitaire mount that lifted the diamond above the band rather than enclosing it.

The Setting solved several problems simultaneously. It maximised light entering the diamond from all angles. It allowed for accurate carat-weight assessment by eye (the stone was fully visible). It produced a visual emphasis on the stone itself rather than on the metalwork, which suited the new diamond-supply economics following the 1867 South African discoveries (diamonds were now plentiful, and the value proposition shifted toward the stone's quality rather than the mount's complexity). And it was simple enough to produce that it could be made at scale in American workshops.

The Setting was patented and became the dominant engagement ring style in the American market within a generation. By the 1920s it was the default; by the 1950s, with De Beers's "A Diamond Is Forever" marketing campaign reinforcing the engagement ring tradition, it had become the engagement ring template across the English-speaking world.

The Tiffany Setting is, in commercial terms, the single most important product Tiffany has ever sold. It is the design that built the company's mass-market position and the design that defined the global engagement ring industry. Contemporary engagement rings sold by other retailers are frequently called "Tiffany-style" or "classic solitaire," both phrases that describe the 1886 Tiffany Setting whether the retailer acknowledges the source or not.

Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios

Charles Lewis Tiffany's son Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848 to 1933) took over the firm at his father's death in 1902, but his interests had diverged substantially from his father's. Louis Comfort was an artist by training and inclination, and his major creative output was through Tiffany Studios, a separate but closely associated company he founded to produce Art Nouveau decorative work.

Tiffany Studios's output included the famous stained-glass lamps (the Wisteria, the Dragonfly, the Magnolia, the Pond Lily) that have become among the most-collected American decorative arts of the period. The Studios also produced stained-glass windows, mosaic work, and various decorative objects, often in collaboration with prominent American architects. The lamps were originally retailed through Tiffany & Co's New York flagship, although they were not formally part of Tiffany & Co's jewellery operation.

Tiffany Studios closed in 1932, the year before Louis Comfort's death. The pieces have remained substantially more collectible than mid-twentieth-century Tiffany & Co commercial jewellery in the modern market. A single Tiffany Studios Dragonfly lamp can sell for £200,000 to £1.5 million at auction depending on condition and rarity, with the rarest examples reaching higher figures.

Louis Comfort's directorship of Tiffany & Co itself was less commercially successful than his father's, and the firm went through a transitional period in the early twentieth century as it tried to balance its mass-market jewellery business with its founder-son's art-driven creative ambitions.

Jean Schlumberger

The next major creative period at Tiffany began in 1956, when the French designer Jean Schlumberger (1907 to 1987) joined the firm as a Vice President and was given his own design studio within the flagship on Fifth Avenue. Schlumberger had been working independently in Paris and New York since the 1930s and had established a reputation for sculptural, often whimsical fine jewellery that drew on naturalistic motifs (birds, fish, flowers, sea creatures).

Schlumberger's most prominent Tiffany work includes:

The Bird on a Rock brooch (1965), made to hold the Tiffany Diamond itself, with the great yellow stone perched in the talons of a stylised diamond-and-platinum bird. The piece has become the visual emblem of Schlumberger's tenure at Tiffany and was the subject of substantial Tiffany advertising in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Lynn ring, a sculptural cocktail ring design that became one of Schlumberger's most-produced pieces.

The Croisillon bracelet, with its distinctive crossed-X enamel pattern in 18-karat gold, named after Jean's longtime client Bunny Mellon.

Schlumberger's clients at Tiffany included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Bunny Mellon, Babe Paley, and Diana Vreeland. The pieces hold their value exceptionally well in the secondary market; signed Schlumberger work from the 1960s and 1970s regularly sells at auction at multiples of the original retail price.

Schlumberger died in 1987. His designs have remained in continuous production at Tiffany and form the foundation of the brand's haute joaillerie offering today.

Elsa Peretti and Paloma Picasso

Two designers joined Tiffany in the 1970s and 1980s who substantially shaped the brand's late-twentieth-century commercial identity at the more accessible end of the market.

Elsa Peretti (1940 to 2021) joined Tiffany in 1974. The Italian designer had been working as a model and then as an independent jeweller in New York. Her Tiffany designs emphasised organic, sculptural forms in 18-karat gold and silver: the Open Heart pendant, the Bone Cuff, Diamonds by the Yard (a delicate gold chain with widely-spaced individual bezel-set diamonds), the Bottle pendant. Peretti's work became, through the 1980s and 1990s, the design vocabulary of the affordable Tiffany silver collection that dominated the brand's commercial output for forty years.

Paloma Picasso (born 1949), the daughter of Pablo Picasso, joined Tiffany in 1980. Her designs are characterised by bold colour, sculptural form, and a more graphic visual language than Peretti's: the Loving Heart pendant, the Olive Leaf collection, large coloured-stone cocktail rings. Picasso's work positioned Tiffany at the more design-forward end of the mass-market luxury spectrum.

Together, Peretti and Picasso were largely responsible for the Tiffany aesthetic of the 1980s and 1990s, the period when the firm was expanding into mass-market accessibility through silver jewellery sold at the entry tier of luxury pricing.

The Tiffany Diamond and the four women

The Tiffany Diamond, the 128.54-carat fancy yellow diamond acquired by Charles Lewis Tiffany in 1877, has remained in the company's possession for nearly 150 years. The stone is set in the Bird on a Rock brooch by Schlumberger (since 1965) but has been worn publicly by only four women across its entire history:

Mary Whitehouse, the social figure, at the 1957 Tiffany Ball celebrating the diamond's centenary.

Audrey Hepburn, who wore the diamond in publicity photographs for the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The film, set in part outside Tiffany's Fifth Avenue flagship, established Tiffany as an American cultural icon and remains the brand's most important moment in popular culture.

Lady Gaga, who wore the diamond at the 2019 Academy Awards.

Beyoncé, who wore the diamond in the 2021 Tiffany campaign "About Love."

The stone has been on continuous display in the Fifth Avenue flagship store between these four occasions of public wearing, and is one of the most-visited objects in the Tiffany New York operation.

The ownership eras

Charles Lewis Tiffany's family operated the firm until 1979. Through the 1970s, the company's mass-market positioning expanded substantially and its financial results were mixed.

1979: Sale to Avon Products. Tiffany was acquired by the cosmetics company Avon Products for $104 million. The acquisition was not a strategic success; Avon had limited experience in luxury retail and the cultural fit between the two companies was poor.

1984: Management buyout. A management group led by William Chaney bought Tiffany back from Avon. The buyout returned the firm to specialist luxury management.

1987: Initial public offering. Tiffany listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker TIF. The public listing provided capital for international expansion (Japan, then Europe) and the development of the international boutique network.

2021: Sale to LVMH. Bernard Arnault's LVMH group acquired Tiffany for $15.8 billion in January 2021, after a delayed and contentious negotiation through 2020. The acquisition is among the largest in luxury sector history and brought Tiffany into the same group as Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Tag Heuer, Hublot, and Chaumet (Tiffany's French competitor since the eighteenth century, now also LVMH-owned).

The LVMH era has been marked by substantial repositioning. The brand has invested heavily in haute joaillerie, raised the price point of its core jewellery offering, and partially distanced itself from the mass-market silver category that defined the firm's commercial output through the 1980s and 1990s. The 2023 reopening of the Fifth Avenue flagship (the Landmark) after a major renovation was the visible statement of the new positioning. Whether the strategy will produce the cultural authority of the pre-1979 Tiffany remains, as of 2026, an open question.

What the brand actually is

Tiffany & Co in 2026 occupies an unusual position in the luxury jewellery market. The brand has the heritage of a 189-year-old American institution. It has the design lineage of Schlumberger, Peretti, and Picasso. It owns one of the most famous coloured diamonds in the world. It produced the single most commercially important engagement ring design in history.

It is also a brand that, through the 1980s and 1990s, sold large quantities of inexpensive silver jewellery at accessible prices and built a generation of customer relationships at the mass-market end of luxury. The cultural authority that built Tiffany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, for several decades, partially dissipated by the commercial choices of the late twentieth century. The LVMH-era strategy is, in effect, an attempt to reconcentrate the brand at the fine-jewellery end of the market.

The 1886 Tiffany Setting remains, even at this distance, the firm's most important product. The Tiffany Diamond remains in the flagship. The Atlas clock is still above the door. The continuity is real, even if the strategic direction has been more variable than Cartier's. Tiffany invented the modern engagement ring, and that invention is going to outlast every ownership change the firm has been through or will go through in the future.

Frequently asked questions

When was Tiffany & Co founded?

Tiffany & Co was founded on 18 September 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young as Tiffany & Young at 259 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. The firm was initially a "stationery and fancy goods emporium" rather than a dedicated jeweller. It became Tiffany & Co in 1853 when Charles Lewis Tiffany bought out his partners. The 1837 founding date is the basis of the Pantone colour name "Tiffany Blue 1837," which is the company's trademarked signature colour.

What is the Tiffany Setting?

The Tiffany Setting is a six-platinum-prong engagement ring mount introduced in 1886 by Tiffany & Co. It lifts the diamond above the band, exposing the stone to maximum light and producing maximum brilliance. The Setting has become the dominant engagement ring style in the American and international markets and is the visual template for the modern engagement ring. Most "classic solitaire" engagement rings sold by any retailer today are based on the 1886 Tiffany Setting design.

What is the Tiffany Diamond?

The Tiffany Diamond is a 128.54-carat fancy yellow diamond owned by Tiffany & Co since 1877. The stone was acquired as a 287.42-carat rough from the Kimberley mines in South Africa and was cut to its current form by George Frederick Kunz, Tiffany's Vice-President of jewellery. The diamond is currently set in the Bird on a Rock brooch designed by Jean Schlumberger in 1965, and is on permanent display at the Tiffany flagship at 727 Fifth Avenue in New York. It has been publicly worn by only four women: Mary Whitehouse (1957), Audrey Hepburn (1961), Lady Gaga (2019), and Beyoncé (2021).

Who designed the most famous Tiffany pieces?

The most important Tiffany designers across the firm's history are: Charles Lewis Tiffany himself (1837 to 1902); Louis Comfort Tiffany of Tiffany Studios (Art Nouveau lamps and decorative pieces, 1880s to 1930s); Jean Schlumberger (1956 to 1987, the Bird on a Rock brooch, the Lynn ring, the Croisillon bracelet); Elsa Peretti (1974 to 2021, the Open Heart, Bone Cuff, Diamonds by the Yard); and Paloma Picasso (1980 onwards, the Loving Heart and Olive Leaf collections).

Who owns Tiffany & Co today?

Tiffany & Co has been owned by LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) since January 2021, when Bernard Arnault's group acquired the firm for $15.8 billion. The acquisition was among the largest in luxury sector history. LVMH also owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Bulgari, Tag Heuer, Hublot, Chaumet, and other luxury houses. Tiffany operates as a separate brand within the LVMH portfolio with its own leadership team.

What is Tiffany Blue?

Tiffany Blue is the trademarked light robin's-egg blue colour used on Tiffany packaging, including the signature blue box with white ribbon. The colour was introduced in 1845 and was registered as a trademark in 1998. The Pantone Matching System has designated the colour "Pantone 1837 Blue" (a reference to Tiffany's founding year), with the colour available only to Tiffany & Co for commercial use.

What was the connection between Tiffany & Co and Audrey Hepburn's Breakfast at Tiffany's?

The 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on Truman Capote's 1958 novella, was set in part outside the Tiffany flagship at 727 Fifth Avenue in New York. The opening sequence of Audrey Hepburn looking through the Tiffany windows became one of the most-recognised cinematic images of the twentieth century. Audrey Hepburn wore the Tiffany Diamond in publicity photographs for the film, the second occasion the diamond had been worn publicly. The film established Tiffany as an American cultural icon and remains the brand's most important moment in popular culture.