he history of watches at Tiffany & Co. is not a linear one. That may be due to the company’s unusual profile, firstly that of an important New York jewellery and gemstone business founded in 1837, but which established itself in Geneva as early as 1874 to apply the efficiency of American productivism to traditional Swiss watchmaking.

In its factory in Cornavin, it produced timepieces with diverse complications and often richly decorated with enamels, engravings and precious stones. Parallel to this, the house was a major distributor and retailer of Swiss watch products in the United States.

A selection of archive models from the “first horology era” of Tiffany & Co, dating respectively from 1889, 1895, 1924 and 1939.

During the 20th century, upheavals on the watch market led it to recentre its business on jewellery more than on its own timepiece production, as well as on the retail trade. It was in this context that it co-designed the dials of brands it distributed in the United States, such as Patek Philippe.

These models were very popular with collectors: even today, collective watchmaking memory instinctively associates Tiffany & Co. with this role and the double-signed dial.

In 1938, on a documentation trip to America, the founder of Europa Star Hugo Bucher paid a visit to the players in the watch sector including Tiffany & Co., which in his report is described as a horloger détaillant, or “watch dealer”.

An article on Tiffany & Co. in a 1948 issue of the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie.

During the 20th century, the brand confirmed jewellery as its core business. The house is described as the largest jeweller in the world in this 1953 archive issue of the Europa Star edition for Latin America, Estrella del Sur.

Then, under different ownerships the brand adopted a policy of volume sales, a change of direction which led it away from the heart of the watchmaking industry – which shifted back to mechanical watches and moved upmarket.

It is this whole chapter, marked by a number of strategic turnarounds, that Nicolas Beau, the new watch director at Tiffany & Co. following its acquisition by LVMH, and who has long years of experience in the sector (Chanel, Richemont), must now “close” to give this activity the place it deserves, under the leadership of its CEO Anthony Ledru and Alexandre Arnault.

Nicolas Beau, Vice-President of Horlogery at Tiffany & Co.

A symbolic timepiece

For the brand, it marks in reality a “return to its original intention” when it all began back in the 19^th century, occupying a place in Swiss watchmaking that it should perhaps never had left, while at the same time assuming its jeweller status to the full.

“For the past four years we’ve been reconstituting all the watch archives of Tiffany & Co., because that’s fundamental to this work,” underscores Nicolas Beau. “We’ve discovered incredible, more or less forgotten documents, about the factory in Cornavin in the centre of Geneva as well as folders of bills for movements from Zenith, orders for clocks from L’Epée, and above all 300 archived items kept in New York.”

Symbolising this quest for the brand’s horological roots, the group acquired, for the price 1.97 million dollars in an auction, an 18-carat gold Tiffany & Co. pocket watch dating from 1912 presented to Captain Arthur H. Rostron of the R.M.S. Carpathia, the first vessel to arrive at the sinking Titanic to save its passengers. It is the most expensive item collector’s item related to the Titanic ever sold.

Tiffany & Co. has announced the acquisition of a historical pocket watch dating from1912. Bought at an auction in the UK for 1.97 million dollars, this 18-carat gold pocket watch is the most expensive collector’s item linked to the Titanic ever sold.

collector’s item linked to the Titanic ever sold. Since its acquisition by LVMH, Tiffany & Co. has asserted its presence on the high jewellery scene and stepped up its global presence beyond its historical American market. Given the evolution of the watchmaking industry itself, it seemed natural that the watchmaking facet of the house should echo this elevation of its core jewellery business.

The new watches certainly do that, presented in 2025 after a four-year period of maturation and preparation and so richly bejewelled that it’s difficult to say whether they are watches or jewellery. After a necessary period of silence, “Tiffany is back!”.

The Bird on a Flying Tourbillon model combines the iconic 1960s Bird on the Rock design by Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co. (inspired, to be exact, by a yellow cockatoo) with the brand’s first flying tourbillon. “Today, complications are widely used in watchmaking and for a jewellery brand like ours it has to make sense,” comments Nicolas Beau. “I love the idea of a faceted crystal flying over the flying tourbillon. It called for quite a bit of ingenuity on the part of our partners at Artime, who designed it for us. What’s more, all the parts had to be arranged at the base of the movement to leave room for the birds in a case which remains thin.”

A free hand

“Everything we do is jewellery-inspired, because in our house, jewellery has always influenced watches,” stresses Nicolas Beau. “It’s this mindset that interests me, with the best possible synchronisation between these different skills. And unlike other jewellers in the same market, at Tiffany & Co. you don’t find one line that dominates all the rest and that you reproduce endlessly. In a way, it gives you more of a free hand.”

Applied to its watches, the house heritage ensures that its collections are unlike those of any other brand, having the distinctive “Tiffany style”. One of the best examples of this in the new collections has to be the Eternity by Tiffany Wisteria model, which picks up on an iconic lamp design by the company from the early 1900s, with a plique-à-jour enamel dial.

Tiffany & Co. recently unveiled the Carat 128 Aquamarine watch inspired by the legendary Tiffany Diamond, a cushion-shaped yellow diamond of 128.54 carats. This unique piece features a 27mm, 18-carat white gold case with 897 diamonds in all (totalling more than 29 carats) set on the case and five-row bracelet. The crystal protecting the dial is made from a single 34.52-carat aquamarine.

Like in the 19^th century, a kind of decentralisation has taken place: while the jewels are designed in New York, the watches are “defined solely in Geneva, although we’re talking together all the time”.

The R&D laboratory in New York certainly develops the materials and the jewellery-setting components, and the stones are sourced from New York to ensure the best quality and origins. It is this savoir-faire that has been channelled into the one-off Carat 128 Aquamarine, with its 34-carat aquamarine cut in the manner of the Tiffany Diamond, or the model Jean Schlumberger by Tiffany Twenty Four Stone. Working gemstones for watchmaking has the added complexity of requiring regularity and uniformity to ensure the watch’s water-resistance, among other technical constraints.

Like the jewellery, watchmaking at Tiffany & Co. is deeply influenced by the work of Jean Schlumberger and the famous Bird on a Rock brooch he designed in1965. One example is the new Bird on a Flying Tourbillon model, which marks an important milestone for the company: this is its first flying tourbillon, developed in partnership with Artime and reflecting the new ambitions of Tiffany & Co. in mechanical watchmaking. The flying tourbillon is housed under a faceted sapphire crystal dome – a first.

A return to a more assertive presence in mechanical watchmaking is also in progress: “When all the new watches will have come onto the market, we’ll be at 60% quartz movements and 40% automatic calibres. But we won’t abandon quartz, which is appreciated by many of our female customers and which we also intend to develop this year – I can’t tell you too much yet!”

Among the technical developments, let us also mention the ingenious, playful system of bearings, usually designed for oscillating weights, but skilfully hijacked with the help of a specialist in the field to enable the bird move to around the dial in the Bird on the Rock watch, which represents the new face of the brand.

Besides these exceptional jewellery watches, Tiffany & Co. will also present extensions of its more affordable lines, Hardwear, Union Square (its square watch was showcased last year) and especially Atlas, the only watch collection in continuous production since the 1980s.

The Eternity by Tiffany Wisteria watch is inspired by the emblematic Tiffany & Co. lamps of the early 1900s, with an enamel plique-à-jour dial in bright colours reproducing the floral pattern.

As with other companies which distribute their creations only to their own stores, the battle is also an in-house one: that of the presence of a watchmaking activity in a network of 350 points of sale which by definition sell predominantly jewellery and gemstones. So, with the arrival of these new watches the task of persuasion and training begins. “With models like the Bird on the Rock, our jewellery and horology worlds are merging together in total harmony,” explains Nicolas Beau by way of conclusion.

Tiffany & Co. also presented two new interpretations of the Jean Schlumberger by Tiffany watch, Bird on a Rock: a 39mm watch set with baguette tsavorites totalling 5.4 carats and the other a 36mm, full pavé diamond model highlighted with 30 baguette-cut aquamarines.

The Jean Schlumberger by Tiffany Twenty Four Stone watch drew its inspiration from the Sixteen Stone jewellery collection. As in the jewellery version, the dial of the watch has an outer ring decorated by an 18-carat yellow gold cross-stitch motif. 18-carat white gold case, 707 diamonds totalling more than 6.5 carats.