Pavé takes its name from the French for "paved" (the same word used for a cobblestone street), and the analogy is apt: small stones set so closely together that the surface appears to be covered in a continuous layer of material, with little or no metal showing between them. The stones are held in place by tiny shared prongs or small beads of metal raised between them, but these are intended to recede visually.
Technical requirements
A well-executed pavé field requires consistent stone sizing; slight variations in diameter or depth mean that the surface becomes uneven, with some stones sitting higher or lower than their neighbours. The setter works across the surface methodically, drilling each setting hole to the correct depth, placing the stone, and raising the retaining prongs or beads. In platinum, the metal's hardness means the prongs hold reliably even when very small, which allowed Cartier's early twentieth-century workshops to achieve pavé fields of exceptional fineness.
Pavé in Cartier's Art Deco work
In the 1920s and 1930s, pavé diamond surfaces appeared frequently in Cartier pieces as a foil for other design elements. Paired with platinum openwork, they created fields of white brilliance. Paired with black enamel, they produced the graphic geometric contrasts that defined much of Cartier's Art Deco output. The combination of pavé diamonds and onyx in particular became strongly associated with Cartier's work of that period: the white of the diamonds against the matte black of the enamel was a simple, high-contrast pairing that reproduced well in photographs and reproductions, helping to establish the visual identity of the style.
Pavé and the Serti Mystérieux
The most technically demanding variant of stone-to-stone setting developed by Cartier is the Serti Mystérieux (Mystery Setting), in which stones are set with no visible prongs at all, held instead in a concealed rail system. Pavé is the broader category; the Mystery Setting is a specialised development that pushes the same principle of concealing the mount further than conventional millegrain or pavé achieves.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 2 (“Louis, 1898–1919”) and ch. 5 (“Stones Paris: Early 1920s”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 144, 151 et al.
