Tiffany & Co.

It is indeed rare when the history of a 19^th century jewel can be traced directly back to the original purchaser. According to the descendants of Bronson Case Rumsey (b.1823 – d.1902) , this brooch was purchased as a gift for his wife, Eveline Hall Rumsey. The Rumseys were one of the prominent families in Buffalo New York, known as the “Buffalo 54”, made up of bankers, lawyers, shipping magnates and tanners and entrepreneurs engaged in local, state and federal politics. The Rumsey family once owned 22 square miles of Buffalo’s 43 square miles, which encompassed the site where the 1901 Pan American Exhibition was held and which is presently the location of the Albright-Knox and Buffalo History Museum. Bronson Rumsey and his brother Dexter had developed a highly successful tanning business. An increasing volume of freight moving between eastern and western states created a need for warehouses and factories to acquire durable manufacturing equipment to expand their enterprises. Bronson Rumsey saw an opportunity for other businesses to obtain long term loans which the local banks could not provide. Together with Pascal Paoli Pratt and $200,000 in capital, Bronson Rumsey founded Manufacturers and Trader’s Bank in 1856. 

During the latter half of the 19^th century Tiffany & Co. became the leading supplier of luxury goods to these high society families. Gentlemen saw to it that their wives would be adorned with the latest fashions in dress and ornament as statements of their wealth and prosperity. The lead designer at Tiffany, Paulding Farnham, created jewels in the opulent Renaissance-revival style, also referred to as the style of Louis XVI , which perfectly complimented the extravagant gowns and ensembles by couture designers such as Worth and Vionnet. Farnham had access to some of the finest colored stones and diamonds made available by Tiffany’s chief gemologist George Frederick Kunz, who had joined the firm in 1877. At the center of this exceptional brooch is a superlative Colombian emerald that measured up to Kunz’ exacting standards. The gem possesses a rich, warm green hue of strong saturation and excellent clarity, expertly faceted in a refined pear-shape.  

Farnham’s source of inspiration for the flanking leaves and cascading clusters of diamonds may have been the Broche Sévginé, or centerpiece of the Currant Leaf Parure created for the Empress Eugenie by Alfred Bapst in 1855 which was later purchased by Tiffany & Co. at the sale of the French Crown jewels in 1887. At that same auction Tiffany had also purchased one of the lots of her “Great Jeweled Belt”, an emerald and diamond pendant transformed into a brooch. The Rumsey emerald and diamond brooch was conceived for one of America’s privileged “royalty” who joined the ranks of Caroline Astor in New York, Boston’s Josephine Mellen Ayer and Jane Stanford in San Francisco.