The Nancy Leeds Diamond Bandeau was made by Cartier Paris in 1912 and is one of the documented examples of the flat-banded tiara form at a date slightly before it became the dominant fashion of the following decade. It was sold at Sotheby's New York in December 2007 as lot 331 in the "Magnificent Jewels" sale (N08371).
Nancy Leeds
Nancy Leeds (1873–1931) was an American heiress whose father, William Bateman Leeds, had made one of the largest fortunes in the United States tin plate industry. After his death in 1908, Nancy Leeds became one of the wealthiest American women of her generation and a significant client of the Paris branch of Cartier at 13 rue de la Paix. The combination of American industrial fortunes and Cartier Paris in this period was a pattern repeated across numerous major commissions: families whose wealth was new enough to be spent without inherited restraint, and whose social ambitions brought them into the European circles where Cartier's work was the expected standard.
In 1920, Nancy Leeds married Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark, entering the extended network of European royal families that had been Cartier clients for two decades. The diamond bandeau pre-dates that marriage by eight years, a purchase from her period as Mrs. Leeds rather than as a princess.
The Flat-Banded Form
The bandeau, or flat-banded tiara, sits low across the forehead or temples rather than rising above the crown of the head. It requires a different set of stones from the upstanding garland tiaras of the same period: an emphasis on width across the brow rather than height, with diamonds or other stones arranged in a horizontal register. The form had precedents in earlier jewellery but became substantially more fashionable after the First World War, when the bobbed-hair fashions of the 1920s made the bandeau's profile particularly suitable.
The Nancy Leeds piece, made in 1912, is at the earlier end of the form's documented history in Cartier's output. Its diamond setting places it within the garland style period technically, even as its flat outline anticipates the Art Deco aesthetic that would follow within a decade. Hans Nadelhoffer, in Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary, defines the diamond bandeau as "a ribbon-shaped tiara whose centre is not accentuated", a description that fits the Nancy Leeds piece closely.
Construction
The bandeau takes the form of a tapering articulated band designed to evoke embroidered fabric. Old European-cut diamonds are set against a transparent web of platinum threads, the whole arranged in a pattern of foliate scrolls. The piece measures eleven inches in length and is numbered 6218.
The construction is convertible. The centre portion can be worn separately as a bracelet; the two end segments detach and can be worn together as a brooch. This multi-function approach was standard practice at Cartier for the most ambitious commissions of the garland period: a piece that justified its cost by serving multiple purposes and adapting to different occasions.
Auction Record
The bandeau was sold at Sotheby's New York on 4 December 2007 as lot 331 in the "Magnificent Jewels" sale (N08371). The piece sold well above its pre-sale estimate. At the time of sale, the brooch fitting was noted as deficient.
The piece was accompanied at auction by a Cartier certificate of authenticity, reference GE2007-148, dated 20 August 2007.
Auction appearances of pieces with this kind of client biography and date are one of the ways in which individual pre-war Cartier commissions can be traced. The catalogue documentation provides a record of the piece's physical description and attribution that is otherwise difficult to reconstruct for works of this period.
Literature
Nadelhoffer, Hans. Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (1984). The definition of the diamond bandeau as "a ribbon-shaped tiara whose centre is not accentuated" is cited in the Sotheby's catalogue for the 2007 sale in relation to the Nancy Leeds piece.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 6 (“Moicartier New York: Mid-1920s”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007)
- Sotheby's, Magnificent Jewels, New York, 4 December 2007, lot 331: Diamond bandeau, Cartier, Paris, 1912
