Tiffany & Co. Studio
It can be difficult, amid the headlines of LVMH’s $16 billion acquisition of it, to remember that Tiffany & Co. started as a small family company one with treasure hunting in its DNA. Charles Lewis Tiffany saw opportunities in new lands, opening a Paris store in 1868, snagging the biggest yellow diamond in the world from South Africa in 1877, and buying out the auction of the French crown jewels for his provenance-obsessed American heiress clients the same year.
And he could spot great talent. Long before the company became known for collaborations with Elsa Peretti and Paloma Picasso and Jean Schlumberger, the founder enlisted a co-conspirator in rare stones, a man named George Kunz. Kunz, like a dapper Indiana Jones, scoured the world for rare and intriguing gems and championed the use of them in an otherwise diamond-dominated jewelry palette: kunzite (named after him), morganite (named after his client J.P. Morgan), sapphires from Montana, tourmalines fro
The Rarest Pearl of All? It s Called the Melo Melo msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.