Tiffany & Company: a Silver House's Tobacco Accessories

Tiffany & Company is an American firm founded in New York in 1837, best known for its jewelry and silverwork. Its place in pipe history is not owed to mass production; from its founding until the mid-twentieth century, the firm sold tobacco accessories — cases, lighters, ashtrays, amber mouthpieces, and pipes now documented by only a handful of surviving examples — in the section it referred to as "fancy goods."

The Founding of a Silversmithing House

Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young opened the shop on Broadway in lower Manhattan as a stationery and fancy-goods store; the starting capital was a thousand dollars, drawn from Tiffany's father's cotton mill. The founding name was Tiffany, Young and Ellis. In 1853, when Charles Tiffany took over management, the name was shortened to Tiffany & Company and the emphasis shifted to jewelry. During the American Civil War, the firm supplied swords, flags, and surgical instruments to the Union army; at the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition it won an award in the silverware category, becoming the first American firm to do so. The Medal of Honor design known as the "Tiffany Cross," prepared for the navy in 1919, is also the work of this house. The silverwork craftsmanship behind the mounting on the tobacco accessories rests on this very silversmithing heritage.