Born in Killingly, Connecticut, to a prosperous textile manufacturer, this visionary merchant was 25 years old when he and John B. Young, with $1,000 borrowed from Charles Tiffany’s father, started a stationery and fancy goods store at 259 Broadway in New York City. Nowadays we know Tiffany & Co. as a world-class premier jeweler and master of American silver design, renowned for its ingenuity in creating the next great design.
In 1878 Tiffany’s Blue Book catalogue, first published in 1845 and featuring the jeweler’s best and brightest, acquired its first cover in the particular shade of blue now known as Tiffany Blue. True to the vision of Charles Tiffany, the Tiffany Blue Box became an international symbol of style and sophistication. Besides the famous blue boxes there is the Tiffany diamond. The Tiffany Diamond is one of the largest fancy yellow diamonds in the world. Discovered in the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa in 1877, the 287.42-carat stone was purchased the next year by Tiffany & Co. for $18,000. Only two women have ever worn the Tiffany Diamond. Mrs. Mary Whitehouse wore the diamond set in a lavish necklace for the 1957 Tiffany Ball in Newport, Rhode Island; and Audrey Hepburn wore a Jean Schlumberger necklace of diamond ribbons surrounding the diamond in publicity photographs for the 1961 film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The Tiffany Diamond is on permanent display on the Main Floor of Tiffany’s famed Fifth Avenue store in New York. Beyond its inherent value and transcendent beauty, the Tiffany Diamond has become a symbol of the jeweler’s diamond authority and the highest standards of quality and craftsmanship established with the founding of Tiffany & Co. over eight generations ago. Also the engagement ring as we know it today, and the romantic traditions that surround it, are in large part the creation of world-renowned jeweler Tiffany & Co. With the introduction of the Tiffany Setting in 1886, the jeweler started a trend that grew into a cherished custom.
Through the years Tiffany & Co. collaborated with a lot of famous jewelry designers. For example; Elsa Peretti, Paloma Picasso, Jean Schlumberger and Frank Gehry. All these designers in combination with Tiffany & Co. made the company as famous for great jewelry design as it is nowadays.