Tiffany & Co. Atlas 32777635

Two decades after beguiling actress Audrey Hepburn made Tiffany & Co. a household name, the legendary luxury jeweler honored the icon that looks after its flagship store with the Atlas watch.

In the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when Hepburn (as the beloved Holly Golightly) steps into the magical world of her favorite shop, she walks beneath a figure that dates from long before the company moved to its flagship Fifth Avenue building. Above the imposing limestone entrance to the store Tiffany & Co. has called home for decades looms a nine-foot statue of Atlas, bracing himself under the weight of an oversized, bronze-coated clock rather than a celestial sphere. The sculpture of the Greek god was an aptly horological interpretation, as the house’s cofounder Charles Lewis Tiffany had been selling watches since the late 1840s. It was first mounted in 1853 at Tiffany’s flagship on Broadway in downtown Manhattan. The statue traveled with the company to its next location, in Union Square, before settling in — or rather over — at the current Fifth Avenue store. 

Designed in 1983 by Tiffany design director emeritus John Loring (b. 1939), the original Atlas watch celebrated the company's historic Atlas figure, drawing stylistic inspiration from the clock in its arms and featuring raised Roman numerals in an elegant serif font reminiscent of those that adorn the clockface. The Atlas watch was modern and minimalist, and the house’s ad copy description was appropriately spare: “In 14-karat gold with quartz movement and pigskin strap.” 

Tiffany has introduced Atlas timepieces for men and women over the years across a wide range of styles. Today’s Atlas watches run the gamut from metal to leather straps, with pink, blue and green dials and diamond-encrusted numerals. Vintage versions include square and round faces in stainless steel. Each one, however, shares the recognizable Roman numeral font from the clock carried by the Atlas statue, and they all operate on Tiffany’s Swiss-made quartz movement. The company has expanded the Atlas collection beyond watches, having incorporated an Atlas ring, bracelets and pendants featuring the numerals, which are often abstracted to become more decorative motifs than they are functional numbers. 

For a brand whose flagship was once dubbed a "palace of jewels" by the New York Times, the Atlas watch is, indeed, an exercise in simplicity. Even the jeweled newer models exhibit a decorative restraint, honoring the beauty in the simplicity of the numerals on the world’s very first mechanical clocks. 

Tiffany & Co. is one of the most prominent purveyors of luxury goods in the United States, and has long been an important arbiter of style in the design of diamond engagement rings. A young Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed to his future wife, Eleanor, with a Tiffany ring in 1904. Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Astors and members of the Russian imperial family all wore Tiffany & Co. jewels. And Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis preferred Tiffany china for state dinners at the White House.

Although synonymous with luxury today, the firm started out rather modestly. Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young founded it in Connecticut as a “stationery and fancy goods emporium” in 1837, at a time when European imports still dominated the nascent American luxury market. In 1853, Charles Tiffany — who in 1845 had launched the company’s famed catalog, the Blue Book, and with it, the firm’s signature robin’s-egg blue, which he chose for the cover — shifted the focus to fine jewelry. In 1868, Tiffany & Co. gained international recognition when it became the first U.S. firm to win an award for excellence in silverware at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. From then on, it belonged to the pantheon of American luxury brands.

At the start of the Gilded Age, in 1870, Tiffany & Co. opened its flagship store, described as a "palace of jewels" by the New York Times, at 15 Union Square West in Manhattan. Throughout this period, its designs for silver tableware, ceremonial silver, flatware and jewelry were highly sought-after indicators of status and taste. They also won the firm numerous accolades, including the grand prize for silverware at the Paris Exposition of 1878. Among the firm’s glittering creations from this time are masterworks of Art Nouveau jewelry, such as this delicate aquamarine necklace and this lavish plique-à-jour peridot and gold necklace, both circa 1900.

When Charles Lewis Tiffany died, in 1902, his son Louis Comfort Tiffany became the firm’s design director. Under his leadership, the Tiffany silver studio was a de facto design school for apprentice silversmiths, who worked alongside head artisan Edward C. Moore. The firm produced distinctive objects inspired by Japanese art and design, North American plants and flowers, and Native American patterns and crafts, adding aesthetic diversity to Tiffany & Co.’s distinguished repertoire.

Tiffany is also closely associated with diamonds, even lending its name to one particularly rare and exceptional yellow stone. The firm bought the Tiffany diamond in its raw state from the Kimberley mines of South Africa in 1878. Cut to create a 128.54-carat gem with an unprecedented 82 facets, it is one of the most spectacular examples of a yellow diamond in the world. In a broader sense, Tiffany & Co. helped put diamonds on the map in 1886 by introducing the American marketplace to the solitaire diamond design, which is still among the most popular engagement-ring styles. The trademark Tiffany® Setting raises the stone above the band on six prongs, allowing its facets to catch the light. A lovely recent example is this circa-2000 platinum engagement ring. Displaying a different design and aesthetic (but equally chic) is this exquisite diamond and ruby ring from the 1930s.