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Tiffany & Co. Elsa Peretti Modernist Candlesticks

$9,000List Price

Elsa Peretti

In an era of social upheaval, venerable Tiffany & Co. designer Elsa Peretti reimagined diamonds as jewelry that working women bought for themselves rather than receiving it from a suitor.

By the time the Italian-born Peretti arrived in New York City, she’d already studied design in Rome, worked for a Milanese architect and taught Italian, French and skiing in Switzerland. She settled on interior design as her potential career path but then chose an altogether different route: modeling. Peretti modeled in Barcelona, Spain, and on the advice of Wilhelmina Cooper — a former model who’d by then founded Wilhelmina Modeling Agency — moved to Manhattan in 1968. When she relocated, Peretti was inspired to pick up jewelry design.

After modeling for designer Halston, the undisputed fashion king of Studio 54, Peretti became his close friend and collaborator, eventually creating jewelry and teardrop-shaped perfume bottles for him. By way of her association with Halston, Peretti took to the disco scene, flourishing in a social circle that included artist Andy Warhol and fashion designer Giorgio di Sant’Angelo.

It wasn’t long before models on di Sant’Angelo’s runway were donning two-inch sterling-silver vases, complete with a rose stem, suspended on leather thongs around their necks. The accessory was Peretti’s inaugural piece of jewelry — she designed it in 1969 after finding a flower vase at a flea market. It was hardly the only time that Peretti found motifs in nature and in organic forms. In the years that followed, her Bean pendant necklace, Starfish earrings and other sensuous accessories would draw on human emotion as well as the natural world around her. Each evocative and wholly versatile design is universally adored decades later, and each was made for a storied American jewelry house with which Peretti would be associated for nearly 50 years.

It was Halston who introduced Peretti to Tiffany & Co. She had her own boutique at Bloomingdale’s by 1972, and her partnership with the firm, which signed the venturesome and unorthodox designer to an exclusive contract in 1974, would cement her place in the lofty annals of jewelry legend. Peretti’s simple but sophisticated designs — the Teardrop collection, her minimalist Diamonds by the Yard necklace and Open Heart ring, to name a few — elevated sterling silver, previously considered unsuitable for fine jewelry, and created an enthusiastic young audience for Tiffany’s offerings. In 1977, Peretti’s designs earned the jewelry house more than $6 million. (In some years, her work has accounted for 10 percent of the company’s sales.)

In 2012, Peretti signed a 20-year, $47.3 million contract with Tiffany & Co., but she passed away in 2021, at age 80. Today, her designs are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the British Museum.

Find an exquisite collection of Elsa Peretti jewelry today on 1stDibs.

Crystel "Bone" Series Candlesticks Designed by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co

$2,900 / set

H 11.38 in W 2.88 in D 2.75 in

Crystel "Bone" Series Candlesticks Designed by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co

By Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co.

Located in Doraville, GA

A pair of hand crafted "Bone" series crystel candlesticks designed by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Company in the mid 1980's. Elsa Peretti (1940 - 2021) was an Italian fashion model, designer and muse of fashion designer Halston during the 1970's and 1980's. Peretti designed jewelry for Halston's collections, in 1974 Halston introduced Peretti to the CEO of Tiffany's, Walter Hoving, she was signed immediately. By 1978 Peretti was Tiffany's leading designer. At the height of Peretti's popularity in the 1980's, she left New York and moved to an abandoned village she had bought in the 1970's near Barcelona, Spain. Between 2009 and 2011, Peretti designs represented 10% of Tiffany's profits. In 2012, Peretti signed a 20 year contract with Tiffany for 49 million dollars. During Peretti's time in Spain in the 1980's, she branched out into homeware with pieces in china, crystel and silver. The crystel "Bone" series candlesticks were designed during this period. Peretti's pieces are owned by the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, the British Museum in London and the Museum Of Fine Arts in both Boston and Houston. The candlesticks measure approximately 11 3/8 inches tall, 2 7/8 inches wide and 2 3/8 inches deep. Both are acid etch signed on the bottom, the signature is very faint, such that it could not be captured in a photo. The candlesticks blue...

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