Mastery of Design: The Jean Schlumberger Blue Flowers Brooch

The Victoria & Albert Museum

The famed jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger (1907-87) worked both with Schiaparelli in Paris and with Tiffany & Co. of New York.  Born into a family of textile manufacturers in Mulhouse in eastern France, Schlumberger’s family’s aspirations for his career inbanking were abandoned in the 1930s in favor of designing costume jewelry for the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli in Paris.


In New York, after the Second World War, he and his childhood friend Nicolas Bongard set up a small jewelry salon in 1947. The quality and beauty of their work prompted Tiffany & Co. to invite the pair to open a design studio and salon within the Tiffany New York store in 1956. Tiffany & Co. continues to produce many of Schlumberger’s designs to this day.


Here, we see an example of his fine work in this brooch in the form of a bunch of sapphire and diamond flowers bound by a diamond ribbon and bow.  It was made for Tiffany and Co. in New York in 1960.