Deep in the vaults and archives of Tiffany’s, you expect to find many things. You expect, say, diamonds. You expect delicious, juicy cabochons, cuddled up row on row, awaiting their new homes in perfect bezel sets. You even almost expect to find Audrey Hepburn. What you don’t expect to find is a hermetically sealed box with a precious piece of folded paper inside. But that’s what happens when an architect comes over to play.
In a shockingly fresh take on jewellery making, Tiffany’s has teamed up with, of all people, architect Frank Gehry—known for his grandly deconstructive aesthetic and subversively shaped buildings—in an ongoing collaboration. The first of the Gehry collections, full of the flowing forms and interlocking structures he is famous for, launches this fall in Canada. It was almost three years in the making, and designed by a man not known for being exactly traditional in his methods. Hence the little piece of folded paper in the Tiffany vaults.
“We would literally say to him, ‘What’s the latest dream that you’ve had? What are you thinking about?’” recalls Jon King, executive vice-president of Tiffany & Co., as he recounts the process that began “on a whim” with a casual cocktail-party chat. “When Fold [one of the jewellery lines, consisting of geometric shapes] began, he grabbed a piece of paper from the table, and he sort of fiddled with it for a few minutes, and that was the basis [of the design]. We protected it just the way he folded it.”
The result of that process is a beautifully modern collection, made—not surprising for an architect perhaps—variously of wood, silver, metal and stones. The motifs, too, are long-time Gehry icons: a heavy silver fish on a black silk cord; oversized square chain-links that cascade down the back; slyly sexy orchids; a choker of small hand-carved wooden fishes; gold and silver necklaces and bangles that torque and twist. It’s massive Gehry, miniaturized.
“The idea of designing jewellery has intrigued me for a long time, particularly the notion of creating shapes on a whole new scale,” says Gehry, whose wife, Berta, was the first recipient of the collection (she is especially fond of Fish, by all reports). “Jewellery is an interesting art form, in that it is a very personal expression of the wearer’s style and personality.”
And while Gehry is certainly considered an artist of sorts—one modern art museum has already purchased some of his jewellery to put in its collection—he has no formal training in bauble making. But Tiffany’s, whose previous collaborators have included Elsa Peretti and Paloma Picasso, didn’t let that stop them.
“This was Tiffany’s saying to Frank Gehry, you dream and you imagine and you create,” says King. “Come up with that form that speaks to you, then Tiffany’s will figure out what to do with that to make it into jewellery. Frank Gehry is not obsessed with whether women want yellow gold or white gold, or whether a couture designer is talking about brown, or whether the form that he is designing could be put on an ear. Rather, he is saying, ‘This fish is the most amazing form, and this orchid is the most beautiful shape, so let’s talk about what you can do to express it as jewellery.’”
And that’s how a designer obsessed with monumental structures comes to the huge stage that is Tiffany’s. And with Frank Gehry’s creations in it, just watch—Tiffany’s classic little blue box may suddenly turn in on itself or melt or, most likely, reach just one corner up, up to the sky…
First published in FASHION Magazine September 2006
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