Cartier London & English Art Works: The Room Where It Happened

It was a wonderful experience to share stories about The Cartiers at Cartier London recently. This slide shows the English Art Works workshop that Jacques Cartier created in the 1920s — on the 3rd floor of 175 New Bond Street, the area that is now La Résidence and, as it turned out, the exact space where I was giving the presentation.

By the time Jacques set up the London workshop, he had already completed an apprenticeship in Paris, moved to 175 New Bond Street, survived being gassed in WWI, and helped Pierre establish the Cartier New York workshop. It was a remarkable body of experience to bring to a new creative endeavour.

I loved hearing stories about the Cartier workshops from my grandfather, who spent a great deal of time up here. This was the engine room of Cartier London — the far-from-glamorous setting where magic happened. Slabs of precious metals and unpolished gems were transformed into gleaming creations worthy of the elegant showroom below.

It was a happy place: those who worked there spoke of chatter, songs and pipe smoke filling the air, and of it feeling like a family.

The jewels created in this room are legendary: the 1930s emerald and diamond Lady Granard necklace pictured behind me, the Queen's pink diamond Williamson brooch, the Halo tiara, the Duchess of Windsor's emerald engagement ring.

And when working with such valuable raw materials, it was important not to waste anything. The mounters wore a leather skin draped across their knees like an apron — after months of work, these would become ingrained with minute particles of precious metals and be sent off to specialist gold firms to be incinerated and the valuable dust extracted.

Even the female polishers had to wash their hair each Friday in the sink at work so the wastewater could be sieved for fine particles that had settled during polishing.

Many thanks to Laurent Feniou for inviting me to speak at Cartier London, just over 100 years after the English Art Works workshop was founded — it was such fun to share stories and sign books, especially in the room where it happened.

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