Who designed the 'Bird on a Rock' brooch for Tiffany & Co.?

Jean Schlumberger designed Tiffany & Co.’s “Bird on a Rock” brooch.

The jewel is a whimsical setting for the Tiffany Yellow Diamond, one of the world’s most famous large yellow diamonds. Schlumberger’s design depicts a stylized bird perched above the stone, allowing the diamond to remain the visual focus while giving it a playful, sculptural character.

Schlumberger joined Tiffany & Co. in 1956 at the request of company president Walter Hoving. He became renowned for imaginative jewelry inspired by animals, plants, and sea life, and eventually worked from his own Tiffany workshop. The Bird on a Rock setting was created for a 1995 retrospective of his work in Paris.

A common mix-up is confusing the brooch’s designer with the diamond’s cutter. George Frederick Kunz supervised the cutting of the rough stone in the nineteenth century; Schlumberger designed the later jewelry setting. Paloma Picasso, Elsa Peretti, and Frank Gehry were also Tiffany designers, but they did not create Bird on a Rock.