Cartier London, the firm's British branch, was entrusted to Jacques Cartier, the youngest of the three brothers, who ran it from New Bond Street through the first four decades of the twentieth century. The branch operated from 175 New Bond Street, and before that from New Burlington Street, building a clientele drawn from the British aristocracy, the royal family, and the international visitors who moved through London's luxury trade. Its opening in London in 1902 was connected, in part, to a royal prompt: Edward VII had asked the Cartiers to establish a presence there so that guests attending his coronation could select their Parisian-style tiaras without crossing the Channel. Edward VII was himself a client and famously described the Rue de la Paix firm as "King of Jewellers and Jewellers of Kings."
The London house developed a character somewhat distinct from Paris. Jacques's repeated journeys to India (travel spanning twenty-eight years, relationships with maharaja clients, and the acquisition of gemstones and objects that fed the firm's design vocabulary) gave the London branch a particular depth of engagement with Indian and Islamic material that is inseparable from some of the most celebrated Cartier pieces of the period.
The workshop network
Cartier London produced its pieces through a network of specialist craftsmen working from two locations. English Art Works Ltd, known as EAW, operated from the top of the 175 New Bond Street building itself, handling jewellery and decorative metalwork; Wright & Davies Ltd, based in Clerkenwell (the traditional centre of London's precision trades), produced watch cases, deployment buckles, and made-to-measure straps. Eric Denton assembled the watches downstairs in the store, and the retail team presented the finished pieces to clients. The Cartier signature on the finished object obscured this workshop structure; pieces were signed and sold as Cartier, not as EAW or Wright & Davies work. The room where it happened, and the craftsmen behind it, is explored in detail on the blog.
Jean-Jacques Cartier and the mid-century period
Jean-Jacques Cartier, grandson of Alfred Cartier and son of Jacques, took over the London branch after his father's death in 1941 and ran it through a period of notable creative output. The Cartier Crash (with its distorted, molten case form) and the Cartier Pebble watch (one of the most unusual and now rarest of all Cartier designs) were among the pieces produced under his direction, with cases made at Wright & Davies in Clerkenwell. The family sold its interest in the business in 1974; Jean-Jacques was the last member of the founding family to run the London branch. Both pieces are explored further on the blog: the Crash and its world auction record, and the Pebble and Jean-Jacques Cartier.
The formal legal entity for the London operation is Cartier Ltd.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 3 (“Pierre, 1902–1919”) and ch. 11 (“The End of an Era, 1957–1974”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 26, 73 et al.
