The Coup of the Year

Charles Lewis Tiffany was always a “just do it” kind of guy. One need only trace the early history of the house he founded in 1837 to see a theme emerge

- Stellene Volandes

The philosophy may be summarized thus: “What is the best there is? Let’s go out and get it.” See: the acquisition of the French crown jewels in 1887, the opening of a store in London in 1891, when the jewelry world was dominated by European houses (Paris followed in 1910), the discovery of the largest diamond in history in 1878, the unearthing and naming of a pink stone they called kunzite and a peachier specimen they called morganite, and the generous use of rare materials like Montana sapphires and Russian demantoid garnets. Oh, and tanzanite, that rich blue stone found near Mount Kilimanjaro in the 1960s? They introduced and named that, too.