Not Just Jewelry: Tiffany & Co. and the Art of the American Gun
By Danny Michael
Most people don’t immediately associate Tiffany & Co. with the American West—unless perhaps picturing the glamorous spoils of a first-class train car robbery. But the famous New York jeweler has a little-known history as one of the finest embellishers of firearms in 19th-century America, and a revolver that passed through their workshop in 1894 tells a story that reaches from the Civil War to the charge up San Juan Hill.
Decorating guns has been a fine art for centuries. Firearms were just another kind of armament—much like the swords and armor that preceded them—and the most prized examples were elaborately adorned. An engraved weapon could signal wealth and status, mark a military achievement, or serve as a diplomatic gift. Tiffany & Co. began engraving firearms as early as the 1860s, and by the time of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 they were well established in the field, displaying as many as 20 embellished guns at their own booth. Their work appeared alongside Smith & Wesson’s booth as well, a testament to the close partnership between the two companies. Most surviving Tiffany-engraved firearms are Smith & Wesson revolvers, though they also worked with Colt and Winchester.
The revolver now at the Cody Firearms Museum left the Smith & Wesson factory in 1894, bound for Tiffany’s workshop. The grips were made from a single piece of silver and engraved with a scene from a Civil War battle, an object already steeped in history before it was sold. It was eventually purchased by Erickson Nichols, a member of the Rough Riders, the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry who rode with Theodore Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War. A gun with a Civil War scene on its grips, owned by a veteran of 1898: it is the kind of object that condenses a whole era of American history into something you can hold in your hand.
Tiffany made a case for the revolver as well. Plain-looking beside the ornate gun it houses, it is nonetheless built from snakewood—a dense, richly patterned hardwood—and marked with the Tiffany & Co. name. Even the packaging was made to last.
The revolver is now in the Embellished Arms Gallery at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, where it joins examples by other celebrated engravers—Nicholas Boutet, Gustave Young, and the Ulrich family among them. It is the first Tiffany-embellished firearm in the museum’s collection, and a good reminder that the history of the American West includes some unexpected names.
Danny Michael serves as the Robert W. Woodruff Curator of the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. This post is adapted from “New Arrivals: Tiffany & Co. Revolver,” Points West, Summer 2025, published by the BBCW.