Elsa Peretti obituary
Innovative jewellery designer who transformed the use of silver and whose work attracted new customers to Tiffany
Silver was fashionable for Arts and Crafts and art nouveau jewellery around the turn into the 20th century, but then fell back into second-best position, fine for folkwear and cigarette cases, but thought too common for a chic neck, wrist or lapel. That was not the belief of Elsa Peretti, who has died aged 80. She began her long career designing jewellery in 1969 when, in a market, she bought an old silver vase that looked like a classical amphora and worked with a smith in Catalonia to produce a miniature copy. She wore it slung on a thong as a necklace, filled with a single flower.
Like most of her plentiful ideas, it was fresh when new, and did not become stale because of imitations or decades in production. Peretti took time over her designs, more in their simplification than their invention: a “bean” that slid along its chain; a “yard of diamonds” – a concept from the New York designer Halston, for whom she was muse and model – tiny real stones set in mounts irregularly along a fine necklace; a cast “cuff” bracelet, inspired by her memory of smooth knobs of human bone in a Capuchin crypt. They were both modern (the heroine of the film Wonder Woman 1984 is all the stronger for a Peretti “bone cuff”) and ancient; when the British Museum added her work to its collection, it looked at home.