Greenhouse For Tiffany & Co.

Marilyn Minter and Other Artists Celebrate ‘Everyday Objects’ With Tiffany & Co. at Milan’s Salone del Mobile The luxury brand has created a line of premium objects, including a paper coffee cup rendered in bone china.  

Edition of Salon del Mobile, Milan’s premier design fair, the iconic jewelry brand Tiffany & Co. unveiled its home collection with five unique window installations by acclaimed artists Marilyn Minter, Laurie Simmons, Anna Galtarossa, Shantell Martin, and Anna-Wili Highfield. 

At the core of this presentation is the concept of the greenhouse—in this case, a beautifully wrought objet d’art made of sterling silver, copper, and glass. The company’s artistic director, Reed Krakoff, explained in a statement that the romantic architectural form was chosen because it is the “perfect expression of Tiffany craftsmanship and a symbol of the power of creativity.”

The greenhouse can be seen as a symbol of incubation, a place where new phenomena are born, cultivated, and brought to blossom. It is also an apt setting to showcase Tiffany’s century-old legacy of elegant, high-quality American design—something Krakoff is highlighting by including the distinctive window installations first introduced by Gene Moore, the legendary artistic director who joined Tiffany in 1955. Moore has been widely recognized as a pioneer of the company’s iconic brand identity.

Tiffany’s debut Home & Accessories collection under Krakoff plays on the whimsical, footloose side of the brand. Christened the “Everyday Objects” collection, it explores items we may encounter in our everyday lives—whose ubiquitous shapes are often taken for granted—and re-contextualizes them as covetable luxury objects, from a sterling-silver crazy straw wrought in vermeil gold to a quintessential paper coffee cup made of bone china and painted Tiffany’s signature robin’s-egg blue.

In the spirit of creative re-contextualization, meanwhile, the five female artists chosen for the celebration were invited to reinterpret the standard notion of the greenhouse. A New York-based artist known for her use of seductive imagery and a sense of dirty glamour in her work, Marilyn Minter filled the conservatory structure to the bursting point with the objects from Tiffany’s home collection. Shattered glass on the floor and fogged windows in a lurid green hue suggest that the greenhouse had become a hothouse indeed. (A series of individual videos feature the artists’ unique perspectives on transforming the objects into works of art.)

Australian-born artist Anna-Wili Highfield uses paper and other materials to convey organic realism. For her installation we see a bird leading a small flock, flying out from the greenhouse trailing along with it an eruption of flowers as if liberating them from their glass confines.

In the spirit of creative re-contextualization, meanwhile, the five female artists chosen for the celebration were invited to reinterpret the standard notion of the greenhouse. A New York-based artist known for her use of seductive imagery and a sense of dirty glamour in her work, Marilyn Minter filled the conservatory structure to the bursting point with the objects from Tiffany’s home collection. Shattered glass on the floor and fogged windows in a lurid green hue suggest that the greenhouse had become a hothouse indeed. (A series of individual videos feature the artists’ unique perspectives on transforming the objects into works of art.)

Using familiar materials in an unconventional way, Anna Galtarossa, is an Italian artist who creates nuanced, totemic constructions. “There’s always a narrative in my head with whatever I’m working on,” Galtarossa told artnet News when asked to explain her installation. “I started thinking about the greenhouse as a source of heat and light—that’s why it’s an orange color. I saw it also as something that’s sacred, a symbol of our human qualities of cultivating and nurturing.”

Galtarossa, who often uses organic shapes and found materials in her work, wanted to create something that was in dialogue with the graphic lines and precious material of the silver Tiffany & Co. greenhouse. “When I pick materials for my work, I end up disassembling or using them in a salvaged way—so that it will be abstract but elegant,” the artist said. “It’s a delicate dance of material.”

𝒟𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓃𝒾𝓆𝓊𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝓇𝒶 𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝓃 𝑒𝓃𝓋𝒾𝓇𝑜𝓃𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝒾𝓃𝓃𝑜𝓋𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝒹𝑒𝓈𝒾𝑔𝓃𝑒𝓇𝓈 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒸𝓇𝒶𝒻𝓉𝓈𝓂𝑒𝓃 𝓊𝓃𝒾𝓉 𝓉𝑜 𝓅𝓇𝑒𝓈𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒹𝑒𝓈𝒾𝑔𝓃𝓈 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑜𝒷𝒿𝑒𝒸𝓉𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒹𝑒𝒻𝒾𝓃𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝟤𝟣𝓈𝓉 𝒸𝑒𝓃𝓉𝓊𝓇𝓎.