A rough diamond from Arkansas: Tiffany shows archive jewels at Crystal Bridges
Orchid brooches, a Schlumberger necklace and a 27-carat rough diamond: Crystal Bridges museum in Arkansas pairs Tiffany jewels with American art. Admission is free.
Archive image · Photo: Alan Islas / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The exhibition “Nature Adorned: The Artistry of Tiffany & Co. and the American Imagination” opened on 9 October at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. It combines jewellery and gemstones from the Tiffany & Co. archives with paintings, glass, minerals and sculpture from the museum's collection. The show runs until 29 March 2027, and admission is free.
Highlights include the “Arkansas Diamond”, a rough, octahedral diamond of 27.21 carats. According to Galerie, 11-year-old Alice Taylor Howell found it in 1926 on a farm in Searcy; Tiffany acquired it in 1946. Also on view are enamelled orchid brooches by George Paulding Farnham, including a Tiger Orchid brooch from 1889, and Jean Schlumberger's “Hedges and Flowers” necklace.
The exhibition grew out of a Tiffany Studios landscape window that Crystal Bridges recently acquired. “We realized there were so many marvelous points of connection between our two institutions,” curator Jen Padgett told Galerie. Alongside the Tiffany pieces hang works by Carmen Herrera, Nancy Graves and Leon Polk Smith.