ANTIQUES - ANTIQUES - A Triumph Of Orchids - NYTimes.com

''Nature sells,'' exclaimed John Loring, Tiffany & Company's longtime design director, describing the success of flower jewelry that Tiffany's showed at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The orchid pins in particular caused a sensation. Tiffany's had 24 jeweled, enameled orchid brooches, each precisely modeled on a different exotic variety, at the fair. They were numbered and embellished with diamonds, emeralds, aquamarines, pearls and rubies.

The jewelry catapulted its young designer to international celebrity: he won the exposition's gold medal for his employer, Tiffany & Company, and established the United States on the international jewelry map. This designer, little known today, is the subject of Mr. Loring's latest book, ''Paulding Farnham: Tiffany's Lost Genius'' (Harry N. Abrams). ''Can you imagine?'' Mr. Loring said. ''This 29-year-old New York boy wins the gold medal in Paris.'' He won the grand prize gold medal for jewelry as well as a gold medal for si *** erware.

The Primavera Gallery in Manhattan is to show a large gold iris brooch encrusted with red tourmalines, diamonds and green garnets from Russia at the International 20th-Century Arts Fair at the Seventh Regiment Armory, which runs from Nov. 25 to 29. Audrey Friedman, the gallery's co-owner, bought it at Christie's eight years ago. ''I outbid Tiffany for it,'' she said. ''It is very rare because it is signed by Paulding Farnham, not Tiffany, which makes it an important piece of American jewelry.''

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Until now, not much was known about Farnham, who went to work for Tiffany's in 1875 at the age of 16 and stayed until 1908. His uncle, Charles T. Cook, a vice president at Tiffany's, had him admitted as an apprentice in the Tiffany ''school,'' a rigorous art academy in the tradition of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

''Tiffany's school was considered a first-class place then,'' Mr. Loring said. ''And Farnham was one of the stars. He spent a tremendous amount of time drawing from nature. He was a great draftsman. He mastered the basics and then abstracted the natural forms.''

Farnham's jewelry designs were inspired by even the lowliest of subjects, from lizards to spiders. It all worked. The motifs also turned up on his picture frames, watches, scent bottles and hair ornaments.

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''The greatest triumph is to be found in the orchid exhibition,'' The Paris Herald reported at the time. ''They are so faithfully reproduced that one would almost doubt that they are enamel, so well do they simulate the real flowers.'' Captains of industry like George Jay Gould and the railroad magnate Henry Walters scarfed them up.

It also has a sentimental provenance. Mr. Loring said that Farnham presented the brooch to his wife, Sally James Farnham, after she admired his sapphire iris brooch, which Henry Walters brought at the Paris fair. The price for the brooch at Primavera is $300,000.

Why no enameled orchids like Farnham's? ''If only I could find someone who could enamel that well, I'd make the orchids, too,'' Mr. Loring said.

''You must remember, America was seen as a second Paradise,'' Mr. Loring said. ''We were the New World. Hudson River School painters like Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church were depicting the glories of nature in the wild. Martin Johnson Heade's orchid paintings were wildly popular. Art in America had a single theme: nature.''

Today Farnham's Tiffany pieces are hard to find on the market. The Manhattan gallery Historical Design, at 301 East 61st Street, just sold a picture frame attributed to Farnham, done in a scroll and leaf motif in sterling si *** er. It is part of the gallery's current show of picture frames. Farnham jewelry also comes up occasionally at auction. Sotheby's sold his orchid brooch No. 19, with two diamond petals and a ruby stem, in 1993 for $415,000.

With prices like these it's not too surprising that Tiffany's recently returned to the drawing board to design some new flower jewelry inspired by Farnham's early work. As Fernanda Kellogg of Tiffany's put it, ''We have three direct descendants of Farnham in the flower category: an iris brooch with blue sapphire petals, a white diamond carnation brooch and a diamond-studded dandelion.'' The prices are $35,000 to $55,000.

Farnham drew brooches in the form of roses, hydrangeas, irises and dandelions. Craftsmen translated them into jewelry, often enameled with precious stone accents. They were a tour de force of the jeweler's art.