Tiffany & Co.

In 1875, General Louis Palma di Cesnola (1852-1904) excavated a group of ancient jewelry dating to the 5th-4th centuries B.C. in Kourion, near Cyprus’ southwestern coast, known as the Kourion (a.k.a. Curium) Treasure. At the time, Cesnola served as American Consul to Cyprus and eventually arranged the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York’s purchase of these antiquities in 1876, the second purchase by the Met from Cesnola. Archaeological excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum in in the 19th century sparked renewed interest in the extraordinary jewels that were unearthed, and demand for jewellery in the style of these ancient cultures became all the rage in both European and American society. Charles Lewis Tiffany was well acquainted with Cesnola through his involvements at the Met, and capitalized on an opportunity by securing the rights to reproduce facsimiles of the ancient originals in the Cesnola collection acquired by the Museum. It took eight months to prepare the objects for display in the Paris exhibition of 1878, and they contributed in the firm’s success in being awarded for its first gold medal at the exhibition. So popular were these reproductions, that Tiffany re-introduced them in 1902 at Turin’s Prima Esposizione d’ Arte Decorative Modern.