Artist Daniel Arsham Brings His Poetic Vision Of Jewellery To Life At Tiffany & Co.
The little blue box gets a big makeover in the hands of Daniel Arsham.
By Imran Jalal,
Two weeks after Tiffany & Co. made headlines for featuring a never-seen-before Jean-Michel Basquiat work in an ad campaign featuring Beyonce and Jay-Z, the American jeweller is shining the spotlight yet again on another icon of the New York art world.
This time, the focus is on contemporary artist Daniel Arsham who is best known for bridging the ephemeral quality of everyday objects with the future through his sculptures. For this special outing, Arsham has created 49 one-of-a-kind bronze sculptures called Bronze Eroded Tiffany Blue Box that poetically reimagine the iconic Tiffany Blue Box.
Launching globally on September 9 via special orders only, the objets d'art are sadly not available in Singapore. Nonetheless, we give you a lowdown as to why this Daniel Arsham X Tiffany & Co. collab is a true gem.
The long-running Future Archaeological is probably one of Arsham's most well-known works and sees him reckoning with the concept of time, modernity, and antiquity through sculptures that have been weathered, eroded and worn out.
As part of this series, Arsham has reworked the iconic Tiffany Blue Box packaging with a hand-finished patina and adorned it with jagged gold crystals, giving it an almost primordial effect while rendering the familiar into something new at the same time.
“I always gravitate towards items that are immediately culturally recognisable. The Tiffany Blue Box has that power,” states Arsham in a statement.
The patina of the box is Arsham's way of bridging the robin egg hue so synonymous with Tiffany & Co. with the green hue that he often uses in his personal work.
However, the patina also serves as a metaphor for the everlasting appeal of the 184-year-old jeweller.
“I wanted to address it in a way different than how it was originally intended by giving it a distressed, aged quality which represents its history, how much of a fixture it is in our world today, and how it will continue to be relevant decades, even centuries from now.”
Housed in the Bronze Eroded Tiffany Blue Box is a limited-edition Tiffany X Arsham Studio Knot bracelet.
This piece is a limited-edition 18K white gold design with diamonds and green tsavorites (the legacy gemstone which the brand introduced to the world in 1974) and hails from the Tiffany Knot collection.
Set to debut in Singapore in January 2022, the collection features an abstract interpretation of a chain link in the form of a twisted knot detail, and spans designs like rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and pendants.