Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was one of the world's great sources of sapphires and pearls, and Jacques Cartier visited the island repeatedly from 1926, working relationships with local gem dealers into a consistent supply of coloured stones that fed back into Cartier London's jewellery.
The 1926 Visit
Jacques first arrived in Ceylon in October 1926. His base was Colombo, and his primary contact was a gem dealer named Macan Mackar, whose shop operated near the city's main port. Mackar was a significant figure in the local trade, with influence that extended well beyond buying and selling: he could broker access, negotiate with mine owners, and arrange visits to sourcing areas that European buyers could not easily reach independently. The relationship was commercially useful despite the markups Mackar applied.
The most significant stone Jacques encountered on that visit was a large rectangular sapphire of around 350 carats, described as being of good colour and free from inclusions. Mackar quoted £25,000. The scale of capital involved for a single stone made London's decision uncertain, and Jacques cabled the Paris and London offices before committing.
Ratnapura
Mackar arranged for Jacques to visit the mining area at Ratnapura, the centre of Ceylon's sapphire industry some fifty miles southeast of Colombo. The mining process at Ratnapura was highly labour-intensive: earth was extracted from pits up to ten feet deep and hauled up in buckets, then sifted repeatedly for any sign of gemstones. Yields were unpredictable, and the economics turned on volume rather than reliability. Jacques observed the process at first hand, noting how few stones emerged from the quantities of earth worked.
Stones and the Firm's Jewellery
Ceylon sapphires were already present in the firm's stock before Jacques's visits. A 478-carat cornflower-blue sapphire acquired by the firm around 1913 was described as "originally from Ceylon." The later visits reinforced and formalised the supply relationship. The sapphires Jacques acquired fed into Tutti Frutti compositions and other coloured stone jewellery alongside Mughal carved gemstones acquired in India.
The Blue Belle of Asia, a large rectangular Ceylon sapphire broadly comparable in character to the stones available through Mackar's network in the 1920s, came to auction at Christie's in 2014 and sold for $17.2 million, a world record for a sapphire at the time.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 7 ("Precious London: Late 1920s")
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, "Maharajas, Pearls and Oriental Influences: Jacques Cartier's Voyages to the East in the Early Twentieth Century," JS12:103–115
