Charles Lewis Tiffany

From a narrow shop to a market for crown jewels

The first Tiffany and Young shop occupied only part of a building at 259 Broadway in New York City. The firm's 1893 history describes a frontage of about fifteen feet, with a modiste occupying the other half. Its merchandise included stationery, writing desks, umbrellas, walking sticks, pottery and imported decorative goods. The later jewellery house began as a much broader small retail business.

Charles Lewis Tiffany was born in Connecticut in 1812, a son of Comfort Tiffany and Chloe Draper. His early work in his father's store included keeping accounts and buying goods in New York. In 1837, he and John B. Young opened their own establishment. The company history says his father advanced $1,000, with the two partners each responsible for half.

That history records sales of $4.98 over the first three days—not a reliable measure of the firm's eventual prospects. Holiday trade was substantially stronger. It also records a burglary at the beginning of 1839 in which goods valued at about $4,000 were taken. The partners had carried the cash home. These details come from the company's celebratory retrospective, but they describe the practical risks and uneven receipts of its first years.

The business expanded its premises and shifted toward jewellery, silver and luxury objects. Charles married Harriet Olivia Avery Young in 1841. Their son Louis Comfort Tiffany would follow a related but distinct career as an artist and designer.

The firm was also alert to public events that could be turned into merchandise. After the laying of the Atlantic telegraph cable in 1858, it sold short lengths mounted with brass ends and accompanied by authentication. The company book reproduces advertising for these cable souvenirs and describes their use in objects such as handles, paperweights and watch ornaments. Customers could buy a physical fragment associated with an internationally celebrated engineering project.

During the Civil War, the firm supplied military goods as well as presentation objects. The 1893 account and its reproduced advertising describe swords, badges and imported officers' equipment alongside other supplies. That record establishes a commercial role in wartime provisioning; it does not mean that Tiffany's own workshops manufactured every item sold.

The scale of the enterprise is visible in a very different transaction in 1887. At the sale of the French crown jewels, Tiffany's acquired twenty-four lots. Its own history reports an expenditure exceeding two million francs. The figure is a company account of the purchases, but the sale marks how far the business had travelled from the narrow Broadway shop.

Charles died in 1902. His career joins several kinds of commerce: ordinary retail stock, fashionable imports, nationally significant souvenirs, military supplies and jewels with royal provenance. The surviving company history is promotional, yet its descriptions of premises, advertisements and transactions provide concrete episodes from that development.

The account places his birth at Killingly, Connecticut. In 1853, after the other partners retired, Charles took control under the name Tiffany & Co.; its silver manufacture used the sterling standard of 92.5 percent silver. The earlier company-history profile also associates the firm with the Blue Book catalogue.

The burial listing places Charles Lewis Tiffany at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, United States.