the Tiffany Jewelry in Berlin and the New York Yacht Club

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(Free-Press-Release.com) June 19, 2010 -- "The Tiffany Earring exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 was the greatest display of 19th-century American silver the world had ever seen," said John Loring, design director at Tiffany & Company. "The current show at the Flagler Museum is the second greatest."

" Tiffany Earrings Silver at the World's Columbian Exposition" at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Fla., through April 16, is an exhibition of Tiffany silver made for that fair. Mr. Loring emphasized the rarity of seeing more than a few pieces of the fair's 19th-century Tiffany silver cache in one place. The giant commemorative cups, sporting trophies, vases, tankards and clocks were dispersed a century ago.

Against all odds, John M. Blades, the director of the Flagler, has reassembled about 20 percent of the major pieces in Tiffany & Co 's original 1893 silver display. "We wanted to heighten appreciation of these magnificent objects and the fair itself," he said. "We also hope the show will bring out more of these objects that are now tucked away in people's attics."

After extensive research, Mr. Blades found the 1893 Tiffany silver in private collections around the world, as well as at the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Tiffany Jewelry in Berlin and the New York Yacht Club.

"When I first discussed the show with John, he told me, 'I have the drawings if you find the pieces,' " said Mr. Blades, who did locate them and has placed them next to the original design drawings from the Tiffany archives.

Mr. Blades's can-do attitude is reminiscent of those who organized the fair in the first place. The 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, dedicated in 1892 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World, was meant to prove America's coming of age.

"Americans thought of themselves as the final step in 3,000 years of evolution," Mr. Blades said. "Americans had walked off with a majority of the Tiffany Jewellery at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris; they wanted the Chicago fair to demonstrate America's cultural and technical superiority."

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