Fabergé and Breakfast at Tiffany’s

To many, the items produced by the respective houses of Charles Louis Tiffany and Peter Carl Fabergé are synonymous. And while both businessmen developed organizations that in their days were internationally recognized as producing the finest luxury items in the world, it is interesting to note despite these differences that similar results were achieved.

In many respects, Fabergé and Tiffany were a bookmatched pair. Fabergé, as has been described elsewhere in this work, was a trained jeweler by the time he took over his father’s established jewelry store in 1872 at the age of 24 as a sole proprietor. Tiffany, on the other hand, opened his store in 1837 at the age of 25 with a business background that involved his father’s cotton products factory and running his father’s country store. Tiffany’s business was created “from scratch”, financed with a loan from his father for $1,000 (about $20,000 today), and he was never in business by himself - from the day he opened he had at least one partner who contributed greatly to the success of the different aspects of the business and on whom he could rely during the difficult times. Fabergé had no such human cushion.

Both men were known for their artistic sensibilities, although each displayed his refinement to a different standard. Especially after the introduction of his brother Agathon to the firm in 1882, the House of Fabergé was known for the classic, quietly elegant items it produced. Fabergé was know to place the overall effect above materials themselves – sometimes less than perfect stones might be used, for example, so that their matching colors would provide an overall unity to the piece. Tiffany, on the other hand, was proud of the fact that his artists designed using only the highest quality stones and other material. Fabergé thought little of this approach. In a 1914 article in Town and Country he expressed his distaste for the work of his competitors: “Clearly if you compare my things with those of such firms as Tiffany, Boucheron and Cartier, of course you will find that the value of theirs is greater than of mine. As far as they are concerned, it is possible to find a necklace in stock for one and a half million rubles. But of course these people are merchants and not artist-jewelers. Expensive things interest me little if the value is merely in so many diamonds or pearls”.

It might surprise the reader to know that Tiffany & Co. didn’t start out as a jeweler, and as a matter of fact didn’t sell jewelry of any kind for several years after it was established. It opened as a stationary and “fancy goods” shop and sold Chinese pottery, Japanese laquerwork, cabinets and other bric-a-brac in a converted townhouse in the low-rent district where the showroom was in what used to be the living room of the house. Tiffany & Young, (Tiffany’s original partner was his life-long friend John B. Young) as the store was originally called, had no established clientele from which to draw, and the receipts showed it. The first day’s take was only $4.98 ($98.⁹² today), but thru the owners’ careful selection of merchandise and its artful display the customers came back, and on New Year’s Eve of that year, the store brought in $675 ($13,408.⁷⁸). It was with the introduction of another partner that the store was to begin down the path for which it has become world famous. In 1841, J. L Ellis joined the firm, and during his buying trips to Europe he discovered, according to William O. Stoddard in his 1893 monograph Men of Achievement, Men of Business, “…better grades of cheap jewelry than were previously known upon this side of the Atlantic”.

There were similarities between Tiffany and Fabergé, too. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, Fabergé is known to have not created any of the exquisite items that were produced by his firm. His talent lie in his ability to design and to recognize and direct the talents of others. The same could be said of Tiffany. Although not a trained jeweler, as we’ve said, Tiffany had a discriminating eye and surrounded himself with artisans who were capable of turning out products for which Tiffany’s would become justly renowned. Stoddard noted that, at Tiffany’s “…the united operations were controlled by the art purpose of the directing artist, who was not himself a handicraftsman of any kind”. Tiffany was known to be “…liberal in its judicious hunt for and employment of workmen”. Tiffany started producing gold jewelry in 1847, and in 1851 began to manufacture sterling silverware. The little shop grew until “the workmen numbered five hundred”, or about the same size as Fabergé’s.

Both firms were well represented in international expositions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tiffany exhibited at the Paris Expositions of 1867, 1878, 1889 & 1900, the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, The Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904 in St. Louis. Not only did the store win several awards over the years, but the exposure brought the attention of many of the crowned heads of Europe, who were to patronize the stores over the years. Tiffany was appointed jeweler to the monarchs of England, Spain, Romania, Russia and several others. Similarly, Fabergé, having been appointed Supplier to the Imperial Court (of Russia) after he exhibited at a Moscow exhibition in 1882, was soon to become familiar to most of the royal houses of Europe. None of this would have been possible, as both would acknowledge, without the association of some of the world’s finest designers and craftspeople.

It is not known if Fabergé became involved in civic and patriotic causes, but Tiffany did. He was one of the founders of the Union League Club during the Civil War that supported the policies of Abraham Lincoln. He was one of the founders of the New York Society of fine Arts, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the American Museum of Natural history. He was a fellow of the National Academy and of the Geographic Society.

Tiffany’s hasn’t been owned by the Tiffany family since 1955, but the store continues in the tradition began by Tiffany and Young nearly two centuries ago. Perhaps Holly Golightly best expressed the sentiments of many in the 1961 classic film Breakfast at Tiffany’s “Well, when I get it (the blues) the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany’s”.