Louis Comfort Tiffany for Tiffany & Co. Black Opal Brooch

Created circa 1910, this Louis Comfort Tiffany brooch is composed of 18K gold, black opal and demantoid garnets. The brooch centers a black opal cabochon retaining its softly irregular natural shape, set within a wirework bezel of double scrolls, further framed by circular-cut demantoid garnets, scrolls, and reverse-tapering beads. A jewel of delicacy and virtuoso goldsmithing, this superb little work of art conveys Louis' love of nature and craft in a composition of vibrant green, blue and red gold.

Materials: 1 oval opal; 30 round demantoid garnets; 18K Gold
Gram Weight: 10.8
Signed: Tiffany & Co., no. 11397V

The art jewelry department, which Louis Tiffany had founded within Tiffany Furnaces, was absorbed into Tiffany & Co. in 1907. There, Louis' art jewelers, working under the leadership of Julia Munson, occupied an atelier on the 6th floor of the firm's headquarters on Fifth Avenue and 37th street. Over the next twenty-five years, the small group of artisans of the Art Jewelry Department consisted of nineteen people in total making "handwrought" pieces, thirteen of them women. Typically, in any given year, the department's creations were designed and manufactured by a group of three or four artisans. Louis himself devoted a few hours a day to the department, whose creations he termed "my little missionaries of art." According to Munson, "Each piece had a name and a personality."