Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887–1973), heiress to the Post Cereals fortune, was one of the wealthiest women in America and among the most significant collectors of Cartier pieces in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Her collection spanned several decades and included major Cartier jewels acquired largely through the New York branch.
Post's collecting reflected the broader shift in Cartier's American client base that Pierre Cartier had helped engineer: the firm had moved from its earlier dependence on European aristocracy toward American industrial fortunes in the early decades of the century, and collectors like Post represented the culmination of that transition.
The New York collecting relationship
Post acquired pieces through Cartier New York at 653 Fifth Avenue, the Beaux-Arts mansion Pierre Cartier had secured as the firm's American showroom. The relationship between Post and the New York branch was one of the most sustained client relationships of the mid-century period, spanning years in which the branch handled some of the most important jewel transactions in America.
Among the documented pieces is a four-strand natural pearl necklace made for her by Cartier New York in 1936, a time when the Great Depression had reshaped who could still commission at this level. The necklace had a diamond back, designed for the fashion of the period for wearing low-backed evening gowns with a striking reverse. Post wore it at her Hillwood dinner parties, and photographs of her wearing it survive alongside the piece itself. In the 1960s she had the necklace altered, the natural pearls replaced with cultured pearls. The piece is now at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, the Washington DC house she gave to the Smithsonian Institution.
Hillwood and the surviving collection
Hillwood Estate, Post's Washington residence and now a public museum, holds the largest surviving concentration of her jewellery and decorative arts collection. The house was designed to display the collection and to function as an environment in which major pieces could be seen in the context of the life for which they were made. The pearl necklace, along with other pieces, is documented and occasionally exhibited there. The Smithsonian's collections also include pieces connected to Post.
Post is notable partly for the documentary record she left: invoices, photographs, and correspondence that allow the history of specific pieces to be traced with more precision than is possible for many American collections of the period.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 6 (“Cartier New York: Mid-1920s”) and ch. 8 (“Diamonds and Depression: The 1930s”)
- Wikipedia: Marjorie Merriweather Post
