Tiffany Funds Four-Year Rescue of Schlumberger Archive in Paris
Tiffany & Co. will fund a four-year rescue of more than 10,000 sketches, designs and personal papers by Jean Schlumberger in Paris.
The New York jeweller has partnered with the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris to pay for the restoration, preservation and conservation of the designer's archive, according to The Art Newspaper. The project was launched at an event at the museum during Paris fashion week, which runs from 28 September to 6 October.
The holding is large. It contains more than 5,000 designs, sketches and gouaches, opaque watercolour sketches often used to test jewellery ideas before anything is made in metal or stone. It holds another 5,000 personal documents that chart Schlumberger's private and professional life.
The practical work is detailed and slow. It involves inventory, restoration and digitisation, which in plain terms means listing every item, repairing fragile paper and making high-quality scans so people can study the designs without handling the originals, according to WWD.
Schlumberger lived from 1907 to 1987. He began in the 1930s making costume jewellery for fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, work that introduced him to the world of Paris fashion houses and their clients.
That start led to New York. In 1956, then-chairman Walter Hoving hired Schlumberger as Tiffany's first named designer, a title that put the designer's name on the work sold under the store's name. Nine years later came one of his best-known ideas. His Bird on a Rock design, a bird figure set above a stone, made its first appearance in 1965.
Tiffany itself later changed hands. The French luxury group LVMH acquired the company in 2021.
What makes this stand out for a general reader is scale and access. Ten thousand pieces is a career in boxes. Conservation decides which sheets can be shown, loaned and photographed in future.
For fans, this means more of the working process may become visible. Finished jewels sit in shop windows. Sketches show the earlier choices, the crossings-out and colour tests that came first.
