Vintage Tiffany & Co. Elsa Peretti 18K Yellow Gold Open Heart Ring

Heart-shaped jewelry is hardly revolutionary, yet in the hands of Elsa Peretti (1940–2021) even the most familiar symbols find new relevance. Born in Florence, Italy, Peretti was a fashion model and Studio 54 fixture before she transitioned into jewelry design. Working instinctively, Peretti’s designs — such as her Open Heart ring — stemmed from a desire to translate evocative forms and archetypal imagery into wearable, intimate jewelry that transcends fashion trends.

“All my work comes out of my life,” she said. “I see lines and shapes where no one else does.”

Peretti's first design was a bud-vase pendant inspired by a flower vase she picked up at a flea market. That piece was worn by a model in a Giorgio di Sant’Angelo fashion show and her design career took off from there. Peretti was soon creating distinctive jewelry under her own name for brands like Halston and Oscar de la Renta.

Peretti’s first collection for Tiffany & Co. sold out in just one day. Pieces such as her Diamonds by the Yard necklace, which debuted in the early 1970s, helped launch a long-standing collaboration that has resulted in over 1,000 pieces for the brand and continues to this day. Peretti’s best seller remains the instantly recognizable Open Heart collection, which started with a pendant.

The Open Heart necklace made the cover of Newsweek in 1977. The idea for the heart form was inspired by a void in a sculpture by British artist Henry Moore. “The shape was there in metal; what I couldn’t work out was how to hang it from the chain,” she later explained. Wilhelm Kalich, who led Tiffany’s jewelry department at the time, suggested that she could simply put the chain through the heart. Kalich’s idea proved to be brilliant and helped lead Peretti to the sweeping silhouette that became a beloved classic for women of all ages.

“I was so overjoyed that I gave my first model to his fianceé,” said the designer.

That same sculptural gesture defines the Open Heart ring, which is available in sterling silver and gold. Over the years Peretti introduced a couple versions of the ring, playing around with the scale and orientation of the fluid, sensuous outline as well as integrating bezel-set diamonds. Like countless Peretti designs, the Open Heart ring demonstrates that “good lines and good forms are timeless.”

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 (1940–2021) 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.

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