I'm baaak! And here to tell you about Cartier at the V&A!
I'd marry Prince Andrew if it gave me access to these tiaras
The long-awaited Cartier exhibition is at the V&A in London, and it is truly jaw dropping. The Manchester tiara opens the exhibition: it was made in Paris for a Cuban-American heiress called Consuelo Yznaga. Every piece is on a plain black background, lit beautifully. It is an eye opener, revealing how forward-thinking Cartier was, being the first to lend jewels to celebrities, a practice that continues to this day. There is the Dali-esque wristwatch from 1967. The Patiala necklace, made in 1928 for a Maharaja. The iconic panther is everywhere: my favourite piece is the Panthere clip brooch, made in 1949 and sold to the Duke of Windsor. We know whose breast that was pinned on. And of course the Cartier jewels worn by our own Royal family: a rose clip brooch owned by Princess Margaret, made for her in 1938. She wore it to the Coronation of her sister, Queen Elizabeth.
The Sainsbury Gallery at the V&A, SW7 2RL. From April 12th, weekday £27, weekend £29. It is wise to book ahead
For a more in depth look at Cartier, here is my piece I wrote for the Daily Mail, having visited the atelier in Paris in May 2008
I am in the atelier above the Cartier store on the Rue de la Paix in Paris. The shop below me, Cartier’s home since 1899, is one of the most exquisite I’ve ever set foot in, retaining as it does the original panelling, parquet floor, display cabinets, and even the desk and chair where founder Louis Cartier sat and worked. There are vintage pieces on sale downstairs, bought back by Cartier from owners scattered across the world, but here on the top floor I am being allowed to be present at the birth of a brand new piece of jewellery. In the palm of my hand is a 65-carat pale green emerald, the first and probably the last time I will touch something so shockingly expensive. But while I baulk at the cost of the pieces that are made here – one pendant downstairs has a price tag of £250,000 – when I find out the amount of work that goes into each piece -- from 1500 hours for a brooch to 3,000 hours for a “tiger” clock set in crystal -- using techniques unchanged for hundreds of years, the price tags suddenly seem much more reasonable.
For those of us who can only dream of owning something from Cartier – I have long hankered after a Tank watch; as well as being far less chavy than a Rolex, it would be an homage to my dad, who served in the Army Tank Brigade in the second world war; the rectangular watch was named in honour of the Allied crews -- we will be able to drool over some of the most important pieces ever to be made when they go on show in London later this month in a brand new jewellery gallery at the V&A.
Having left the atelier with a dissatisfied sigh, I am invited to a party to celebrate this brand new entente cordiale at the British Embassy, in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. On the walls of the embassy are modern British works of art, from Damien Hirst to Rachel Whiteread, but as Bernard Fornas, the president of Cartier, points out, jewellery has suddenly, in these volatile financial times, become a surprisingly good investment. He reminds me that in 1987, the designer Calvin Klein bought for his wife, Kelly, a natural pearl and diamond necklace and pendant by Cartier. It had been commissioned by Queen Mary, who gave it to her son, who then gave it to his wife, the Duchess of Windsor. Calvin Klein paid $200,000 for it, and in December last year it was sold by Sotheby’s for a staggering $4 million. Cartier seems to be immune to the downturn; it recently flew 400 of its best clients to Lancaster House in London to view the latest collection of one-off pieces; the whole lot was snapped up within hours.
There are 40 master jewellers at work in the atelier – it can take between 15 and 20 years to train here – not to mention cutters, setters and polishers, producing pieces that possess the unmistakeable “Cartier DNA”. Over 80% of what’s made is unique: one-off commissions that start with the purchase of a single stone, proceeds through a collaborative series of drawings, and ends on the workbench of the master jeweller, who will fashion a wax mould, into which the molten metal is poured, before being filed (each jeweller has a leather sling to catch the fragments) and made ready for the gems. Cartier is most famous for pioneering the use of platinum, first found in south America, which is difficult to work with but gives stones a far “whiter”, more discreet setting than any other precious metal.
The cutter’s nail-biting job is to make the most of the “lustre” of each stone. A diamond can be cut into a shape called “fire”, meaning it gives off a coloured light, or “brilliant”, meaning it gives off a very pure, white light. The final piece is then polished, a painstaking process using metres and metres of cotton thread that is pulled through every orifice.
Cartier himself travelled all over the world in search of precious stones. He bought pearls in the Persian Gulf, enamels in Russia, but it was in India that he found the most extravagant stones, in the collections of the maharajahs. Leafing through the archives, I am amused to find alongside a photograph of a turban ornament the following catalogue entry: “A Cartier creation for the Maharajah of Kapurthala… one of the most enlightened of Hindu princes, he spends part of each year in Paris.” Particularly prized were Indian emeralds; the location of the mines where these stones were found remains a mystery to this day.
The most famous Cartier piece still being made today is the “Tutti Frutti” or Indian-style bracelet of different-coloured stones: sapphires, emeralds, rubies and diamonds, all nestled in a frieze of foliage. It was first created by Cartier in the 1930s, and marked the start of the West’s infatuation with all things “exotic” and eastern. A “Tutti Frutti” necklace was made in 1936 for Daisy Fellowes, the “world’s most elegant woman”, daughter of the Duc Decazes and Isabelle Singer, who wore the jewels just once, to a costume ball in Venice in 1952.
Louis Cartier opened his first shop in Paris in 1847, and soon attracted clients including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the King of Siam and, in 1921, the Prince of Wales, who as the Duke of Windsor was to become Cartier’s most loyal customer, buying many pieces for his wife including, in 1949, a brooch made of platinum and set upon a 152-carat sapphire cabochon.
The first London store opened in 1902, managed by Pierre, one of Louis’s three grandsons, and business took off between the first and second world wars as members of the new “high society” as well as royals started to commission jewellery. Cartier’s designers drew on 18th century designs and combined them in a style that was heavily influenced not only by Indian jewellery but by Cubism, oriental art and Egyptian iconography (the modern, streamlined but colourful style Cartier was fond of in the 1920s and 1930s was only labelled “art deco” in the 1960s, when the Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925 was recognised as a landmark in design. More and more earrings were bought during this inter-war period, too, as short hairstyles such as the “Eton crop” came into fashion.
Cartier later diversified into bags, perfume and pens: the brand’s latest must have is the Marcello doe Cartier bag, in alligator, crocodile and ostrich. But it is in its illustrious past, an age peopled with glamorous older women with taste as well as money, that the most mind bogglingly beautiful pieces were made and worn. Cartier’s most loyal customer has to have been Elizabeth Taylor. In 1969, Richard Burton bought her a pear-shaped, white-blue 69.42-carat Cartier diamond, which became known as the Taylor-Burton diamond, later fashioned into a necklace. American socialite Barbara Hutton, too, was a valued customer.
Nowadays, though, Cartier shuns the limelight. Unlike Bulgari and the like, it loans jewels to celebrities only rarely; pearls are never, ever loaned in case the wearer’s fake tan discolours them. An exception was made for Keira Knightley, who was so entranced by the fact the diamond-encrusted paws on a panther bracelet moved, she begged to borrow it to wear on the red carpet. The signature panther, by the way, came about in the 1940s when designers took inspiration from the zoo in Vincennes, outside Paris. Obsidian stones, which are brown, black and silver, are used to create the cat’s eerily realistic-looking coat.
The discreet, gloved sales assistants at Cartier are probably privy to more secrets of the rich, the famous and the royal than the CIA. The need to keep every item ever sold confidential was learned the hard way. When the stately home of one member of the aristocracy went up in flames, she contacted the Paris shop for details of all the pieces her late husband had bought for her so that she could claim on insurance. When she was sent a detailed account of his purchases over the years, she phoned the store in a fury to say she couldn’t remember receiving half of them; it turned out these were the pieces he had given to his many mistresses.
My favourite piece in the V&A exhibition? This has to be a pair of Tutti Frutti bracelets, which could also be reconfigured to be worn as a bandeau across the forehead. They were commissioned by Lady Louis Mountbatten in 1928, and she wore them to nurse her baby. It is reassuring to know that women have long been independent enough to buy their own baubles, and to wear them as they should be worn: cavalierly, and with affection.