One of Louis Cartier's greatest gifts was his ability to spot talent in others.
What was so remarkable was that he often did this before they had even recognized it themselves: he found his head jewellery designer installing a balcony up a ladder and spotted his future artistic director looking stylish in a fashionable Parisian restaurant. One of the lesser-known collaborators — but arguably one of the most talented of all — was master horologist Maurice Couët.
Louis may have had no horological training himself but he wasn't going to let a little detail like that stop him from making the most magnificent clocks in the world.
Ten years younger than Louis and born to a Rouen family of clockmakers, Maurice Couët was in his mid-20s, with his own fledgling business, when Louis asked him to create table clocks exclusively for Cartier.
A huge range of Cartier Paris desk clocks followed, with inventive features that still seem modern today (including months and days of the week, rotating dials, and more). But Louis wasn't content to stop there, and the creations dreamed up by the pair became more and more ambitious. In this image of Couët in his Paris workshop, he's working on a chimera mystery clock (more to come on this style — sadly this one was dismantled in 1953) while on the top shelf behind him sits this Egyptian temple clock.
It's an exceptional piece, not just in terms of design but also in its clockmaking and craftsmanship. Covered in intricate hieroglyphics and made in some of the most sought-after materials of the day (gold, mother-of-pearl, coral, lapis lazuli and emeralds), it also features a concealed panel that drops on an invisible hinge to reveal the winding mechanism.
I love this ingenious detail — a subtle wink to the secret openings discovered deep within the Egyptian pyramids and tombs. This clock reappeared at Christie's in 1991, and extraordinary Couët clocks continue to surface at the major auction houses to this day.
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