The Egg Designs of Tiffany & Co

Gene Moore, the dean of display art in American retailing, works a year ahead on his designs for the Tiffany windows, the most expensive display space in the world. ''You wouldn't want to think about Easter in November,'' he said, waving an ever-present cigarette. ''I have to be in the mood along with everybody else.''
Every year since 1955, he has used eggs to represent the arrival of spring and the joy of Easter. That makes 34 different egg-based displays, so at the moment he is trying to invent new interpretations for this common symbol of creation. He has scrambled them, painted them and strung them into necklaces, some years piling hundreds of them in each window. Entering Minimalist Phase at 77
Now, at the age of 77, as he approaches the end of his legendary career, he has entered a minimalist phase. This year, in one of Tiffany's five windows, he has suspended a single egg in midair as if by magic and hidden a Tiffany diamond-and-turquoise pin in the clover beneath it.
It is a classic Moore design, the fragile egg ready to drop, the pin camouflaged among the clover and tucked beneath an azalea bush in full bloom. It represents a contrast so full of energy that shoppers cruising past the most important retail corner in the United States pull themselves up short to gaze through the window, and then break into a smile as the joke leaps through the glass to grab them.

TIFFANY & CO. Elsa Peretti Full Heart earrings

TIFFANY & CO. Heart Band Bangle

TIFFANY & CO. Double square pendant

Saturday, November 14, 2009