In Palm Beach, a Reunion of a Tiffany Extravaganza - New York Times

Tiffany's si *** ersmiths were well prepared to make their mark. They had already won the grand prize for si *** erware at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, working under the designer Edward C. Moore (whose Japanesque designs had won the grand prize for si *** er at the Paris Exposition of 1878). Moore died in 1891, so Paulding Farnham, Tiffany's chief jewelry designer, and John T. Curran, the top si *** er designer, were put in charge of the exhibition. Curran was supported by two of Tiffany's great masters in si *** er design, Eugene Julius Soligny and James H. Whitehouse, creators of many of America's most bombastic racing and sports trophies in the late 1800's.

The Chicago fair, built at record speed, covered 686 acres of landscaped parkland, with gigantic Beaux Arts-style creamy-white exhibition halls flanking 60 acres of waterways and "Venetian" lagoons. Some 27 million people visited. It published a newsletter in 14 languages and presented the world with the first Ferris wheel. (Erik Larson's 2003 bestseller, "The Devil in the White City," is a wonderful history of it.)

Correction Appended

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.

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"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood" was the watchword of the fair's director of work, the Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham. He assembled a team of famous talents, including the architects Richard Morris Hunt, Stanford White, Charles McKim and *** Sullivan; the sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French; and the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

The Tiffany exhibition of jewelry, si *** er and horology was in the immense Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, which was 1,700 feet long, 800 feet wide and 211 feet high.

"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.

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

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

"It was a time when people really thought big," Mr. Blades said. "Just like Flagler, who built a railway to Key West before there was even a road there."

PALM BEACH, Fla. — "The Tiffany exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 was the greatest display of 19th-century American si *** er the world had ever seen," said John Loring, design director at Tiffany & Company. "The current show at the Flagler Museum is the second greatest."

Correction: Mar. 1, 2006, Wednesday: The Antiques column in Weekend on Friday misstated the date of the Paris exposition that participants in the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition hoped to surpass. It was 1889, not 1900.

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Against all odds, John M. Blades, the director of the Flagler, has reassembled about 20 percent of the major pieces in Tiffany's original 1893 si *** er 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 si *** er 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 Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin and the New York Yacht Club.

What was remarkable about what Tiffany created for Chicago, apart from what Mr. Loring calls "the extravaganza of technique," was its notable American flavor.