Necklace

It was not until after the death of his father, Tiffany & Co. founder Charles L. Tiffany, in 1902 that Louis began to design his own jewelry. Among the first pieces of his jewelry to be exhibited were the 27 examples shown to international acclaim at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Three years later, in 1907, Tiffany & Co. purchased the enameling and jewelry-making department of Tiffany Furnaces at Fifth Avenue and 37th Street and established a dedicated "Art Jewelry" section. The Art Jewelry department, which produced some 5,500 pieces of jewelry, remained open until Louis’s death in 1933.





Louis Tiffany developed a special fascination with the constantly changing colors of opals, which are featured here along with demantoid garnets, blue and yellow-orange sapphires, and tiny freshwater pearls. Tiffany & Co.’s gem expert, George Frederick Kunz, was especially enamored of semi-precious stones. This design was probably created by Meta Overbeck under the direction of Louis Tiffany. The necklace appears in a photograph from the Louis Tiffany scrapbook dating from around 1918, helping to suggest a likely dating.