American Art Works was the name of Cartier New York's in-house high jewellery workshop, established under Pierre Cartier in the early years of the New York branch. The first version of the workshop was set up before the First World War by Pierre Bouquet, working alongside the diamond setter Louis Maîtrejean, the man credited with mounting the Hope Diamond in its Cartier setting. From 1911 it took on the young French designer Maurice Duvalet, sent over from Paris at seventeen, who would later make a name for his ballerina brooches before moving on to Charlton & Co. and Van Cleef & Arpels New York.
After Bouquet's death in 1915 the workshop was rebuilt and led from the winter of 1920 onward by Paul Duru, a fifty-one-year-old craftsman handpicked from Paris. Under Duru it grew quickly: thirty jewellers by 1922, around seventy by the late 1930s. The team of the period included Alexandre Genaille, Maurice Duvalet, and the Maîtrejean family (Louis's son Philippe also later worked at Cartier).
In 1925 Pierre added a second New York workshop named Marel Works for the firm's silverwork and goldwork. American Art Works was dissolved in May 1941; its high-jewellery work passed to a new in-house operation called Vors & Pujol. The fuller account of the New York workshop's evolution is in The Cartiers, ch. 4 and ch. 10.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), pp. 142, 239, 275, 479, footnotes 583n479 and 564n126
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007)
- Antique Jewelry University, "Maurice Duvalet" and "Cartier"
- Richard Jeanjacques, "Le Joaillier Cartier aux USA: Palm Beach et New York" (2011)
- Decisions and Orders of the New York State Labor Relations Board, vol. 5 (1942), pp. 14–19, cited in The Cartiers footnote for the May 1941 dissolution
