Item number: 58363
Modern sterling silver decanter,
designed by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany,
executed by Pampaloni Argenti,
Florence post 2006
Subtly rounded body, slightly tapering towards the upper rim, with a deeply set and smoothly running spout on the front and a curved handle on the back.
Exceptional modern jug in sterling silver of a good gauge and a simple elegance.
The “Pampaloni Argenti” goldsmiths, founded in Florence in 1902 by Ermindo Pampaloni and still family-owned today, produce silverware using both traditional working methods with moulds made of boxwood and modern die-casting. Initially in collaboration with Gianfranco Pampaloni, the company carried out the designs for silverware created by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co. Designed in 1984, the carafe has been produced since 2006 until today. Copyright of the original designs by Elsa Peretti.
Height: 21 cm / 8.26“; 1484.0 g / 47.71 oz
Elsa Peretti (Florence 1940 – Sant Martí Vell 2021)
Important Italian jewellery designer, model and philanthropist.
Born into an upper middle-class family that made its fortune from oil, she left home at the age of 21 and moved to New York in 1968 where she settled in the Manhattan district. It was at this time that she began designing jewellery, initially for the fashion designer Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo, then for her friend and fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, for whom she also worked as a mannequin. Her unconventional jewellery designs were soon well received in New York and Elsa Peretti gained her first fame. In 1974, Peretti was contracted by Tiffany as a designer, which resulted in a long-lasting and fundamental collaboration for Tiffany: her creations, such as Bean, Bone Cuff and Open Heart, gained such popularity that they generated up to 10% of Tiffany’s business turnover. In her choice of materials, Elsa Peretti did not choose gold alone but preferred silver, whose distinguished, unobtrusive lustre she particularly appreciated. Unusual at the time, she was inspired by shapes based on nature, such as bones or beans, which she transformed into unpretentious but always extravagant creations in jewellery or silverware such as candlesticks, tumblers or vases or this carafe.
Hailed by the international fashion magazine Vogue as “probably the most successful woman ever to work in jewellery”, Elsa Peretti’s high status as a designer is also reflected in the fact that 18 pages are devoted to her jewellery and silverware designs alone in John Lorning’s retrospective “Tiffany Style: 170 Years of Design”.
Despite her great success, Elsa Peretti was always characterised by her companions as a self-confident but modest personality who refrained from diva-like airs. As a patron of the arts, Elsa Peretti supported the restoration of the initially desolate Catalonian village of Sant Martí Vell, north-east of Barcelona. In 2000, she founded a charitable organisation in honour of her father, which supported various interest groups in the fields of culture, education, science, the defence of human rights and environmental protection. She also proved entrepreneurial proficiency outside of jewellery production by investing her property in real estate.
Exhibits of jewellery and silverware that Elsa Peretti designed for Tiffany & Co. are now in the collections of the British Museum (London), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) and the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), among others. An identical sterling silver carafe, also made by Pampaloni Argenti silversmithy, is in the possession of the British Museum (see here).
