Edward, Prince of Wales (23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972) occupied an unusual position in the interwar world: he was at once the heir to the British throne, one of the most photographed men alive, and a figure whose personal style was scrutinised and imitated across Europe and America. His patronage of Cartier carried that weight with it.
Early purchases and personal style
Edward began buying from Cartier in the 1910s, initially with the support of his father's court but increasingly on his own account. He had a taste for bold jewellery, unusual stones, and pieces that signalled modernity rather than inherited tradition. That combination made Cartier, with its platinum work and Art Deco vocabulary, a natural fit. He bought pieces for himself as well as for the women in his life during the 1920s and 1930s.
Wallis Simpson and the abdication commissions
The relationship with Wallis Simpson, which became public in the mid-1930s and which led to the abdication in December 1936, generated some of Cartier's most discussed commissions of the twentieth century. The engagement ring he gave her in October 1936 centred on an emerald that Jacques Cartier's agent had acquired on a mission to Baghdad, a stone said to have once belonged to the Great Mughal, of such scale that in the economically straitened 1930s it could only be sold by cutting it in two. Edward gave Wallis the 19.77-carat half, set by Cartier in platinum, and had it engraved: "WE are ours now 27 X 36": the date of his proposal, 27 October 1936, and also the day she petitioned for divorce from her second husband. He gave Simpson a series of other significant pieces before and after the abdication, including work that accompanied their marriage in 1937. The panther pieces he gave her were made by Cartier across the 1940s and came to define the visual language of their relationship in retrospect, though they arrived over a span of years rather than in a single gesture.
After the abdication
Following the abdication, Edward became Duke of Windsor and settled into a life divided between France and periodic travel. He and the Duchess continued buying from Cartier into the 1950s and 1960s. Jean-Jacques Cartier, who ran Cartier London through much of this period, maintained the relationship with them. The Windsors' jewellery collection as a whole, which was sold at auction in Geneva in 1987, provided one of the most detailed documented records of Cartier's output for a single private client.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 3 (“Pierre, 1902–1919”) and ch. 8 (“Diamonds and Depression: The 1930s”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 23, 25 et al.
- Wikipedia: Edward, Prince of Wales
