Techniques and Materials

Referencia

• Cabochon A gemstone polished to a smooth dome without facets, used throughout Cartier's work from watch crowns to Indian-style commissions.
• Convertible Jewellery Cartier's practice of designing pieces that could be worn in multiple configurations, using purpose-built mechanical fastenings: brooches that joined into stomachers, tiaras that separated into necklaces, clips that combined or split.
• Enamel in Cartier Work Enamel, fused glass applied to metal in multiple techniques, appears across Cartier's output from pocket watch cases and vanity boxes to Art Deco cigarette cases and the London workshop's distinctive enamel Tank watches.
• Grisaille Enamel A painted enamel technique using graduated grey tones to create monochromatic figurative or decorative scenes; used by Cartier on clock faces, vanity cases, and miniature portrait covers in the early twentieth century.
• Guilloché A precise decorative engraving technique using a rose engine lathe, producing intricate repeating patterns, used by Cartier as the ground for translucent enamel dials.
• Millegrain A decorative border of tiny uniform metal beads applied to the edges of jewellery settings, associated with Cartier's Garland Style and Art Deco work in platinum.
• Mughal Carved Gemstones The carved gemstone tradition of the Mughal emperors produced thousands of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and spinels engraved with floral and calligraphic decoration. These stones, preserved in Indian princely treasuries, became the raw material for Cartier's Tutti Frutti style.
• Pavé Setting A method of setting small stones closely together across a surface with minimal visible metal between them, creating a continuous field of stone.
• Perlage A decorative finishing technique applied to watch movement components in which overlapping circles are ground into the metal surface using a rotating pegwood stick and fine abrasive.
• Platinum in Cartier Jewellery Louis Cartier's adoption of platinum when almost no craftsman could work with it transformed jewellery design, enabling the delicate, lace-like settings of the Garland Style and changing what was structurally possible.
• Rock Crystal A colourless, transparent form of natural quartz used extensively by Cartier in mystery clocks, decorative objects, and frames.
• Serti Mystérieux A gem-setting technique in which stones are mounted on invisible internal rails so no metal is visible from above; the gems appear to float. The term is Van Cleef & Arpels' name for the technique; Cartier also used invisible setting in the mid-twentieth century.