Inside Tiffany & Co.’s Botanica: Blue Book 2022
Contemporary and innovative designs fashioned after familiar flora, from orchids to thistles, take centre stage in the high jewellery collection.
From the maker of those million-dollar masterworks we’ve seen trace the contours of the most celebrated style icons from Kim Kardashian to Lady Gaga comes a lush new entry to the ripe and rapidly expanding Blue Book collection. Paying homage to the timeless beauty of flora, Blue Book 2022: Botanica reimagines motifs from the archive of Tiffany & Co. and delivers a plethora of exceptional designs handcrafted by artisans at the House’s high jewellery workshop in New York. The old and the new converge and collide in a harmonious contrast, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the series of diamond-intensive jewellery modelled after the dandelion seeds from, get this, an early 20th century Louis Comfort Tiffany hair ornament.
For context, the first Blue Book that debuted in 1845 was actually called Catalog of Useful and Fancy Articles. The term “Blue Book” was only coined 35 years later for the 1880 catalogue. Offering upmarket merchandise and rare imports from China, England, France, Germany and India, the earlier editions, however, featured a “Diamond Department” section that was said to exhibit one of the largest and most comprehensive assortments of diamond and gemstone jewellery in the United States at the time.
The throwback trend continues as Botanica revisits G. Paulding Farnham’s orchid brooches that he created for Tiffany’s display at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. Sculptural and remarkably realistic, the transformable clip in platinum and 18k yellow gold with diamonds will especially get fans of the brand basking in nostalgia. And speaking of transformable jewellery, the five-in-one dandelion-inspired necklace also stuns for its versatility thanks to Tiffany’s groundbreaking mechanisms that allow it to metamorphose with ease.
Now, no Blue Book publication is complete without an introspective exploration into Jean Schlumberger’s extensive portfolio and Botanica is no different. His floral and naturalistic creations here are reinterpreted with surprising combinations of gemstones. Schlumberger’s Fleurage bracelet, brought to life for the first time from a sketch that the designer once considered for the Tiffany Diamond, for instance, is set with a mesmerising over 48-carat cushion-cut aquamarine, artfully framed by flower petals made of dazzling diamonds.
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