Some of Mr. O'Brien's introductions, however, passed muster and became Tiffany hallmarks, including a balloon-shaped all-purpose wine glass and a sterling si *** er ballpoint pen with an elongated T-shaped clip. He also was instrumental in the career of Elsa Peretti, the Italian jewelry designer. The youthful, bohemian designs she created under Mr. O'Brien, including a si *** er bud-vase pendant and a gem-dappled, gold-chain necklace known as "diamonds by the yard," remain in production.
George O'Brien, who as design director of Tiffany & Company brought modern designers like Elsa Peretti into its fold and who as home furnishings editor of The New York Times edited its first book on home design, died on Wednesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. He was 78.
By 1967, however, Mr. O'Brien had become disenchanted with dispensing design advice amid centerfolds and sex tips. Instead, he made another abrupt career move, succeeding his former companion, Van Day Truex, as the director of design and development of Tiffany.
The son of a truck driver and a schoolteacher, Mr. O'Brien served as a sergeant in the Army in Japan in the late 1940's before returning to Berkeley, Calif., his hometown, to attend the University of California.
The transition was not without difficulty. According to Mr. O'Brien's sister, the president of Tiffany & Company at the time, Walter Hoving, never allowed him to commission products that were not first approved by Mr. Truex, who came in once a year from his home in France to accept or, as happened more often, reject his protégé's selections.
,,,,, *** bracelet heart, *** key pendants,Mr. Truex, an influential tastemaker who had significantly modernized the staid Tiffany product line, was leaving and recommended that Mr. O'Brien replace him.
His sister, of Santa Cruz, Calif., is his only immediate survivor.
After graduating, he moved to New York, where he worked in the publications department of the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950's before joining The New York Times. He served as the paper's home furnishings editor from 1961 to 1964. The next year, Mr. O'Brien edited "The New York Times Book of Interior Design and Decoration," which featured homes that he had published in The Times Magazine before he left the paper to become the modern living editor of Playboy in 1965.
Mr. O'Brien retired from Tiffany in 1978, and, not surprisingly, was replaced by Mr. Truex. He then worked as a freelance writer and editorial consultant for The New York Times. Mr. O'Brien was also a design consultant for private clients and organizations like Britain's National Trust, for which he created a collection of home furnishings and accessories based on antiques in historic English houses.
The cause was pulmonary failure, following a heart attack suffered on Monday morning, said his sister, Nancy Krantz.
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