Edward VIII came to the throne on 20 January 1936 following the death of his father George V. He had been, as Prince of Wales, one of Cartier's most prominent clients for years, commissioning pieces for himself and for others. His relationship with the American socialite Wallis Simpson was already well established before his accession, and it was this relationship that would define the year.
The coronation had been planned for 12 May 1937. Before it could take place, Edward announced his intention to marry Wallis Simpson, who had been twice divorced. The constitutional and religious objections proved insuperable, and on 10 December 1936 Edward signed the Instrument of Abdication, becoming the Duke of Windsor. His brother succeeded him as George VI, and the coronation proceeded on the originally planned date with the new king.
The engagement ring and the jewels
In October 1936, Edward proposed to Wallis Simpson with a Cartier emerald ring. The flamingo brooch designed by Jeanne Toussaint for Wallis in 1940 is among the pieces from the continuing relationship. The full story of the ring and the jewels is told in The Cartiers, ch. 8.
The panther jewels associated with the Duchess are closely associated with mid-century Cartier design: the first three-dimensional panther brooch was created for her in 1948, and an articulated panther bracelet in diamonds and onyx followed in 1952. Many of the pieces for Wallis were designed in Paris by Jeanne Toussaint, sometimes with the Duke's direct involvement.
The 1987 Sotheby's auction
In exile in France and later elsewhere, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor continued to order pieces from Cartier Paris and Cartier London over the following decades. Wallis Simpson's collection, seen in its entirety when it came to auction at Sotheby's Geneva on 2-3 April 1987, achieved approximately $50 million, a world record for a single-owner jewellery collection at the time. At a subsequent Sotheby's London sale in 2010, the 1952 panther bracelet sold for £4.5 million, setting new auction records for both a bracelet and a Cartier item. The pieces document not just a personal relationship but a particular phase of Cartier's design history.
The coronation of George VI
The coronation of George VI on 12 May 1937 drew its own commissions. Cartier London was reportedly commissioned to make tiaras for a large number of guests attending the ceremony (accounts give the figure as 27), examples of the firm's established role in equipping royal occasions. In November 1936, shortly before the abdication, the future King George VI had purchased a diamond halo tiara from Cartier for his wife, the future Queen Elizabeth; she wore it in a photograph that appeared on a commemorative stamp issued for the coronation. But it was the abdication, not the coronation, that left the larger mark on Cartier's story.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 8 and ch. 9
- Wikipedia: The Abdication Crisis and Coronation of George VI
