The European Watch and Clock Company (abbreviated as EWC, and sometimes EWCC) was a New York-based firm that served as the principal importer and retailer of Cartier watches primarily for the American market during much of the twentieth century. Its story is bound up with how Cartier operated across national markets in an era when assembling a fine watch was itself a transnational affair.
Cartier did not, in the family firm period, manufacture its own movements. Cases, dials, and decorative elements were produced or commissioned separately, and movements were supplied by Swiss makers including Jaeger-LeCoultre. In the American market primarily, EWC was the entity that drew these threads together: receiving components, completing the assembly in New York, and selling the finished watches through the Cartier New York retail operation. The firm occupied a role in the American context somewhat analogous to that which English Art Works Ltd and Wright & Davies occupied in London, the commercial and manufacturing infrastructure behind the elegant showroom, all part of Cartier's wider atelier network.
The result, for anyone examining a vintage American-market Cartier today, is a watch that may carry several signatures at once. A dial might read "Cartier", a movement "European Watch & Clock Co.", and the case carry American import hallmarks, each marking a different stage of the object's journey. This layering of signatures reflects the layering of the watch's origins: Swiss mechanisms, Parisian design, New York assembly, American sale.
The American import markings found on EWC-assembled pieces reflect a specific regulatory history. The Tariff Act of 1930, signed on 17 June 1930, imposed marking requirements on imported watch movements and cases, establishing in U.S. law a systematic obligation to identify the country of origin of watch components. A distinct layer was added from 1 May 1936 under the US-Swiss trade agreement of that year: a three-letter code system administered by the Chambre suisse de l'horlogerie, under which Swiss exporters stamped movements destined for the American market with codes identifying the US importer. EXU, found on many American-market Cartier pieces, was the code assigned to the European Watch and Clock Company. A watch signed by both Cartier and EWC, with an EXU movement code and 1930 Act import hallmarks, carries a layered record of its commercial geography: the 1930 Act governed what had to be declared; the 1936 code identified to whom.
EWC markings locate a piece within a particular strand of the business (the American chapter of a transatlantic commercial operation that spanned Paris, London, and New York) and connect it to the specific institutional arrangements that made Cartier's American presence possible. A watch signed by both Cartier and EWC carries, in its markings, a record of the commercial geography of its moment.
Sources
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 166, 272 et al.
