American Beauty

It wasn't just her Hollywood star power that made Audrey Hepburn glitter. In 1961, during a photo shoot to promote her role as Holly Golightly in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The actress was photographed wearing a Tiffany diamond-ribbon necklace. But this was no ordinary diamanté—its centrepiece was the 128.54-carat Tiffany Diamond, one of the largest yellow diamonds in the world. The gem, since reset in a brooch known as "Bird on a Rock," pictured, is itself now one of the biggest stars in "Bejewelled by Tiffany, 1837-1987." The exhibition—at the Gilbert Collection, Somerset House in London until Nov.26 and expected to travel to China and Japan later this year—traces the irresistible rise of Tiffany & Co. from its inception in 1837 as a small fancy-good store on New York City's Broadway, and how the company instilled its jewelry with what curator Clare Phillips calls a "subtle patriotism."

Nicknamed the "King of Diamonds" by the U.S. press founder Charles Lewis Tiffany aspired to supply items for every milestone, from gold armlets for newborns to onyx mourning crosses to remember the American Civil War dead. Tiffany's designers often worked with such U.S.-sourced gems as Montana sapphires and Mississippi river pearls, and favored American naturalism over European historicism. As John Loring, design director of Tiffany's since 1979, explains, "Our unofficial motto is that Mother Nature is the best designer." From a delicate diamond-and-sapphire dragon-fly hair ornament (circa 1895) to an Art Deco platinum-and-diamond necklace that invokes the Manhattan skyline (circa 1930), the exhibition illustrates how Tiffany's has achieved international renown for truly American craftsmanship. Holly Golightly would have loved it. gilbert-collection.org.uk