Become Stopped in Your Tracks!

Designers at Tiffany & Company have a magician-like talent for wondrously inventing window displays which hero their jewelry through a keyhole window to a make-believe terrene juxtaposed with the real and surreal. Each motif magically tips the scale of imagination to deliver the ultimate gold-standard of surprise & delight with hide-and-seek gems.

Although difficult to research the history of Tiffany & Co. display windows, I discovered many bloggers who were as star-struck as I with Tiffany’s incredibly expressive creativity. Snapshots of worlds in miniature, each window a unique scene combining the most stunning of jewelry pieces metaphorically positioned as props.

(Click on links below to enjoy scenes captured by others.)
http://www.butterflygallery.com/arts/tiffany.html
http://manhattan.about.com/od/newyorkcityholidayguide/ig/Lighting-of-UNICEF-Snowflake/Tiffany-s-Holiday-Window.--Ri.htm
http://nyclovesnyc.blogspot.com/2008/12/tiffany-christmas-window-display.html
http://www.americanpoems.com/members/tifaandco/tiffany-co-jewellery-display-in-windows/


Tiffany is credited with some of the most innovative merchandising ever seen by the retail industry. For example, the direction of visual merchandising was forever changed through the company’s artistic reinvention of the window display, initiated by Walter Hoving, controlling owner of the company from 1956 to 1980, and Gene Moore, window designer extraordinaire. Moore, known for witty displays combining magnificent jewels with unlikely props and paraphernalia, joined Tiffany in 1956 and remained with the company until 1995. http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/1836/Tiffany-and-Company.html



Best known for turning Tiffany's five little windows into head-turning attractions, the 5,000 or so windows Mr. Moore decorated for Tiffany & Company during his 39 years as the store's vice president for window display were testament enough to the scope of his imaginative powers, to fully appreciate the impact of his artistic genius you must take a stroll down memory lane, force yourself to stop in front of a typical Tiffany window of the 1940's and yawn as you regard a neat, linear arrangement of silver platters, bowls, candlesticks and the like.

Now fast forward a decade or so, retrace your steps and just try not to stop when, out of the corner of your eye you spot, say, a bird, its beak extended, pulling -- hey, that's not a worm, that's a diamond necklace! -- out of the earth. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/26/nyregion/gene-moore-88-window-display-artist-dies.html?pagewanted=1



Next time you’re in the vicinity of a Tiffany & Co., be sure to detour past its five signature windows to enjoy child-like wonder for a moment in time.


The Painted Memory
www.thepaintedmemory.com