Cartier's jewellery output spans more than 170 years and several distinct stylistic periods, each shaped by the materials available, the design thinking of the people running the workshops, and the tastes of the clients who commissioned and bought. The house has never been exclusively a jeweller, producing watches, clocks, and objects of vertu alongside its stone-set pieces, but jewellery has remained the core of what distinguishes it.
The Garland Style Period
The early decades of the twentieth century were shaped by the adoption of platinum as the primary metal for fine jewellery. Where gold had previously been used for all settings, Louis Cartier's decision to work predominantly in platinum allowed settings to be made extremely thin and light, so that stones appeared to float without visible support. The Garland Style, characterised by swags, bows, and foliate motifs in white diamonds on platinum, was the result. It defined Cartier's output from approximately 1895 to 1914 and established the firm as the pre-eminent source of that particular formal language.
Millegrain settings, in which stones were held by a fine beaded border of metal, and pavé arrangements of closely-set stones were both techniques associated with this period, used to create surfaces of continuous brilliance.
The Art Deco Period
The shift from white-on-white Garland Style to the bold colour contrasts of Art Deco was one of the more dramatic transitions in jewellery history. By the early 1920s Cartier was combining materials in combinations that the previous generation would not have considered: coral with diamonds, lapis lazuli with onyx, jade with platinum, and carved Indian stones alongside European-cut diamonds. The influence of the Ballets Russes, the 1922 opening of Tutankhamun's tomb (which triggered Egyptian Revival motifs across the decorative arts), and the arrival of Mughal-carved gemstones through Jacques Cartier's Indian connections all fed into this period.
Tutti Frutti pieces, with their carved rubies, emeralds, and sapphires set alongside diamonds, are the most recognisable expression of this synthesis.
The Indian Commissions
Jacques Cartier's repeated visits to India, beginning with the Delhi Durbar of 1911, opened relationships with the Indian princely courts that produced some of the largest and most technically demanding commissions in the firm's history. The Maharaja of Patiala brought his treasury to Paris, and the result was the Patiala Diamond Necklace of 1928: 2,930 diamonds including the 234-carat De Beers No. 1 centrepiece. The Nizam of Hyderabad commissioned a necklace as a wedding gift for the future Queen Elizabeth II, a piece that would appear in some of the first official portraits of the new reign. The Maharaja of Kapurthala, who modelled his court on Versailles, was a repeat client across decades. The Maharani of Baroda brought her own collection to Cartier for resetting.
These commissions brought a flow of Mughal-carved gemstones into Cartier's Paris workshops, where centuries-old carved emeralds, rubies, and sapphires were remounted in platinum settings. The combination of ancient Indian stones with the most technically advanced European metalwork of the day produced the Tutti Frutti pieces and the broader Indian style that became central to Cartier's Art Deco identity. The full history is explored in the Maharajas webinar series.
Techniques
The technical vocabulary of Cartier jewellery includes several methods that required dedicated specialist workers. Guilloché engine-turning created patterned metal surfaces as grounds for translucent enamel. Serti Mystérieux, the mystery or invisible setting, allowed stones to appear set without any visible metal between them, their girdles sliding into invisible grooves in a mounting structure concealed beneath the stones. Enamel in all its forms (champlevé, plique-à-jour, painted) appeared throughout the output, particularly in vanity cases and small objects.
In the family period, Cartier leveraged a network of independent ateliers alongside its own growing in-house capacity. Henri Picq and Henri Lavabre were the principal goldsmiths for the Paris branch in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their maker's marks appearing on the great majority of pieces from the Garland Style and early Art Deco periods. Maurice Couët built the mystery clocks from his workshop at 53 rue Lafayette. Rubel Frères, Strauss, Allard & Meyer, and Verger Frères supplied finished jewellery and decorative cases. In London, English Art Works and later Wright & Davies performed the equivalent role, fabricating cases and settings for the New Bond Street branch.
Iconic Pieces
Several individual Cartier jewels have acquired a status beyond their material value. The Wisteria Brooches, the Halo Tiara, and the Bird Brooches of the post-war years are among the most referenced. The Trinity Ring, three interlocking bands in yellow, white, and rose gold, is dated by most sources to around 1924 and has remained in continuous production. The Kokoshnik tiara form, associated with the Russian court and widely commissioned in the early twentieth century, represented a meeting of the firm's technical capacity with the taste of its northern European and Russian clients.
Later commissions continued the tradition of ambitious individual pieces. Maria Félix's 1968 articulated diamond serpent necklace, commissioned from Cartier Paris, is one of the most widely known individual commissions the house received.
The great natural pearl necklaces that Cartier assembled and sold in the early twentieth century belong to a period before cultured pearls transformed the pearl market. Pierre Cartier's most famous transaction in this category, the exchange of a pearl necklace for a New York mansion, was both a reflection of the pearl trade at its peak and a piece of opportunistic real estate dealing.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019)
- Wikipedia: Cartier Jewellery
