Charles Lewis Tiffany

Charles Lewis Tiffany (February 15, 1812 – February 18, 1902) was a nineteenth century leader in the American jewelry trade and founded New York City's Tiffany & Co. in 1837. Known for his jewelry expertise, Tiffany created the country's first retail catalog, and introduced the English standard of sterling silver in 1851.

Born in Killingly, Connecticut on February 15, 1812, Tiffany was educated in a district school and in an academy in Plainfield, Connecticut. Starting at the age of 15, he helped manage a small general store started by his father, the owner of a cotton-manufacturing company. Charles Tiffany later worked at the office of his father's mill. The Tiffany family descended from the immigrant Humphrey Tiffany (England, UK, 1630-Swansea, MA, 1685), who had lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1660.

Charles Lewis Tiffany (left) in his store, about 1887

In 1837, with $1,000 borrowed from his father, Tiffany and a school friend, John B. Young, set up a small stationery and gift shop in New York City. Their first three days in business brought them only $4.38 in total sales, but two years later they were still in business, selling glassware, porcelain, cutlery, clocks and jewelry.

The store expanded in 1841 and changed its name to Tiffany, Young and Ellis. It established a reputation for selling only the finest goods and specialized in Bohemian glass and porcelain. It also began manufacturing its own jewelry. In the early 1850s, the company was reorganized under the name Tiffany and Company and opened branches in Paris (1850) and London (1868). The store also relocated uptown to a Fifth Avenue location in that decade.

Tiffany was terribly embarrassed in an 1872 diamond and gemstone hoax perpetrated by Philip Arnold that cost investors more than half a million dollars.

One of the great achievements in his life was when he teamed up with Thomas Edison and together they created foot lights and other ways of electrically lighting theaters. As a result of this, Broadway and other shows became more popular during that time.

The firm acquired and sold some of the French crown jewels in 1887, firmly establishing its reputation.

At his death in Yonkers, New York on February 18, 1902 at the age of 90, Charles Tiffany's company was capitalized at more than $2 million and acknowledged as the most prominent jewelry company in North America.

On November 30, 1839, he married John B. Young's sister, Harriet Olivia Avery Young (1817–1897) with whom he had six children: Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), Charles Lewis Tiffany, Jr. (1842-1847), Annie Olivia Tiffany Mitchell (1844-1937; grandmother of Hiram Bingham IV through her daughter Alfreda Mitchell, and she at the same time, is the first wife of Hiram Bingham III, one of the first explorers to Machu Picchu, Peru), Louise Harriet Tiffany (1856-1937), Henry Charles Tiffany (1858-1859), and Burnett Young Tiffany (1860-1945).

In addition to his business, Tiffany was a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one of the founders of the New York Society of Fine Arts.

Tiffany was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1878.