Tiffany Co. Schlumberger Croisillon Bracelet

What better way to emulate Jacqueline Kennedy's style than by wearing her favorite bracelet? Designed by Jean Schlumberger (1907–87), the Croisillon bracelet, with its bold enamel hues punctuated by gold bands and X’s, is the result of a 19th-century process in which enamel is layered over gold leaf.

The First Lady’s Croisillon bangle (the first one, at least) was a gift from her husband, John F. Kennedy, who bought it at Tiffany Co. in 1962. The piece quickly became a staple of her daytime wardrobe. In fact, she wore a stack of them so often the press took to calling them the “Jackie bracelets.” 

Schlumberger was a free-spirited visionary who rebelled against his parents — when they sent him to Berlin to study banking, he soon moved to Paris, where Elsa Schiaparelli gave him his first big break making buttons. He had a fantastical imagination, which he explored through natural motifs like sea creatures, shells and plants. The self-taught Frenchman was hired by Tiffany Co. in 1956. Greta Garbo and Diana Vreeland were among his notable clients, and the philanthropist and heiress Bunny Mellon, who owned a substantial collection of Schlumberger’s work, became one of the designer’s dearest friends. (The two often sat together while he drew, and events in her life shaped his work.)

Schlumberger had an eye for detail that made him an industry trailblazer. The enduring popularity of the Croisillon, with its bright enamel and hand-textured molten-gold motif, is evidence of his design acumen.

Jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger once said that he strived to “make everything look as if it were growing, uneven, at random, organic, in motion.” His jewels interpreted the vitality of the natural world with lively designs that included a moonstone-topped jellyfish brooch with sapphire tentacles exuding a watery shimmer and a ring encrusted with a burst of diamonds that “bloomed” like a flower bud.

A self-taught jeweler, Schlumberger’s mastery of color as well as his expertise as a draftsman brought his fantastic ideas to life. Born to a leading textile manufacturing family in Alsace, France, Schlumberger took to drawing as a child and showed promise as an artist, but his parents instead sent him to study banking in Berlin in the 1930s. Uninspired, he departed for Paris and began creating buttons for Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who also commissioned him for costume jewelry.

One of Schlumberger’s early pieces — a cigarette lighter in the form of a fish whose head opened to reveal the flame — demonstrated his skill for capturing the vivacity of nature in precious metal. The designer’s imaginative jewelry was in contrast to popular geometric lines of Art Deco, an independent vision he affirmed in the extravagant 1941 Trophée de Vaillance brooch created for fashion editor Diana Vreeland. An extravagant confection of diamonds, amethyst, rubies and gold, the brooch featured gemstones adorning an intricate intersection of tiny spears and a breastplate over a glittering shield.

After serving in the French army and the Free French forces during World War II — and surviving the Battle of Dunkirk — Schlumberger left war-torn Europe for New York and in 1946 established a jewelry salon with Nicolas Bongard. There, his vibrant work caught the eye of Tiffany Co. After joining the American luxury jewelry house in 1956, he soon had his own studio on the mezzanine of Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue store that he accessed by a private elevator. In his workshop, Schlumberger used a rainbow of gemstones, gold and diamonds to create some of the company’s most beguiling designs.

From striking earrings shaped like soaring wings to diamond birds perched on glittering gemstones, each of Schlumberger’s Tiffany designs dazzled. His supporters included Bunny Mellon, whose love for horticulture inspired commissions such as the Jasmine necklace with diamond blossoms flowering from a garland of colored sapphires, and Jacqueline Kennedy, who wore his Croisillon bracelets so often they became known as “Jackie bracelets.” Schlumberger retired from Tiffany in the late 1970s, but decades after his designs were introduced many of his popular pieces remain in production.

On 1stDibs, find an extraordinary range of vintage Jean Schlumberger jewelry designed for Tiffany Co.