There are times when my work affords me the opportunity to experience something truly historic. I recently had the privilege of being among the first to view Tiffany & Co. Legendary Legacy: A Landmark Exhibition in Bangkok. A rare opportunity to experience Jean Schlumberger’s fantastical world just as I imagine he would have intended.
Curated by Tiffany’s Director of Archives and Heritage, Christopher Young, the exhibition draws together more than 50 works, some from the Tiffany Archives and others on loan from distinguished private collections. The pieces on display are both a retrospective and a revelation of historical design brilliance. They remain startlingly modern and heavily influential for Tiffany and its designs today.
The exhibition begins with Guadeloupe: An Island of Inspiration, a nod to the lush flora and fauna of Schlumberger’s Caribbean retreat. From there, the path spirals into the Garden of Imagination, where his reinterpretations of nature feel less like observation than dreamwork. His genius was never to replicate but to reimagine. Birds that shimmer with audacity, flowers caught in perpetual bloom, and sea creatures that seem alive with motion.
The Elephant Head Clip (1968), on loan from the Joan and Jack Quinn Collection, is a masterclass in Schlumberger’s blend of whimsy and technical brilliance. Crafted in gold, platinum, diamonds, emeralds, turquoise, and enamel, it reflects his fascination with wildlife and his travels through Southeast Asia, where elephants are symbols of power, resilience, and royal heritage. Here in Bangkok, it resonated as both an artistic triumph and a cultural homage.
Other highlights spoke to the designer’s enduring dialogue with tastemakers of their time. The Trophée de Vaillance brooch (1941), commissioned by the then Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, gleamed with the same commanding confidence as the woman herself. “A Schlumberger lights up the whole room,” she famously remarked, a sentiment that proved true at the exhibition. The Hedges and Flowers necklace, meanwhile, felt almost couture in its construction, its yellow sapphires and turquoise pendants creating a bold collar that danced with light and dimensionality.
What unites these works is Schlumberger’s singular visual language. A friend to Salvador Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli, he shared their surrealist instinct for asymmetry, texture, and bold colour. His pieces were sculptural, dreamlike, and above all, alive. Sapphires, enamel, and turquoise weren’t simply beautiful adornments, but tools of drama and whimsy. Every jewel was meticulously constructed to be as remarkable on the reverse as it was on the front, a standard that Tiffany still upholds today.
But the pièce de résistance was, of course, the Tiffany Diamond. Something I have been lucky enough to view on two occasions now. Discovered in 1877 in South Africa’s Kimberley mines and cut the following year into its current 128.54-carat form, it remains one of the most storied gems in the world. Worn publicly only four times by Mary Whitehouse in 1957, Audrey Hepburn in 1961, Lady Gaga at the 2019 Academy Awards, and Beyoncé in Tiffany’s 2021 “About Love” campaign. Having been reset five times, its most recent incarnation, unveiled in 2023 for the reopening of The Landmark in New York, pays tribute to Schlumberger’s Bird on a Rock. In this extraordinary design, the diamond is surrounded by five diamond-encrusted birds and functions as a pendant or a brooch. Featuring more than 75 carats of diamonds and 10 pink sapphires (marking each eye of the five birds), and taking over 2,000 hours to craft, it epitomises both the unrivalled craftsmanship and the enduring dialogue between Schlumberger and Tiffany.
The week’s grand finale was unveiled to the world with the spectacle only Tiffany can command. Fans gathered outside One Bangkok to glimpse Asia’s brightest stars, each adorned in one of Schlumberger’s fantastical creations. Inside the gala, proud clients wore exquisite pieces from their private collections. Joan Quinn, the owner of some of the pieces on display, joined the party, all lending an unparalleled grandeur to the evening. Yet the true star of the night was Schlumberger, where his imagination glittered on necks and lapels.
With its delicate balance of tradition and modernity, Bangkok proved the perfect stage for Tiffany’s first Southeast Asian exhibition. Here, Schlumberger’s surrealist creatures and bold allegories of joy, transformation and metamorphosis felt utterly at home. Legendary Legacy is not just a retrospective; it is a reminder that true artistry transcends time, culture, and place, and that Jean Schlumberger’s extraordinary vision continues to shape Tiffany’s story today.
