Tiffany & Co. Takes Its Iconic Bird on a Rock to Watches

The Bird on a Rock has been a creative through line for Tiffany & Co. ever since its designer Jean Schlumberger debuted the brooch in 1965, taking inspiration from a yellow cockatoo he saw while on vacation.

But it’s only in the past few years that the motif has really taken off as an all-encompassing emblem for the American house. To celebrate the 2023 reopening of its New York City flagship, The Landmark on Fifth Avenue, the brand created five new iterations of the Bird on a Rock brooch — and reimagined the Tiffany Diamond in a new avian-inspired convertible pendant after the 128.54-carat fancy yellow’s 1995 debut as the Bird on a Rock to end them all. 

Now, Tiffany is adding a new series of to its ever-growing Bird on a Rock collection, reimagining the motif underneath the case and on the dial. The Bird on a Rock Legacy watch comes in three iterations, all of which feature the diamond-set bird sitting atop its gemstone rock (this time done in tanzanite, morganite and aquamarine) against a mother-of-pearl dial that is engraved with an intricate floral design inspired by floral patterns found in Schlumberger’s Caribbean home on the island of Guadeloupe (where the designer first saw the yellow cockatoo that inspired it all). Despite being contained within the 18k white gold watch case, the gemstones come to 1.45-carats for an oval-shaped morganite, 2.1-carats for an emerald-cut aquamarine and 2.72-carats for a cushion-cut tanzanite, all of which can be see on the reverse of the watch through a perfectly aligned aperture on the dial, displayed through a loupe window.

The addition of timepieces to the collection comes at a moment when the Bird on a Rock has become a focal point in the men’s jewelry renaissance; the brooch has shed any stuffy connotations to become a genderless symbol of glamour, reflected in the now-countless . That’s all to say that it was only a matter of time before the Bird reached the wrist.