Pierre Camille Cartier (10 March 1878 – 27 October 1964) was the second of Alfred Cartier's three sons, and the one who built the firm's American presence. Where his elder brother Louis ran the Paris house and his younger brother Jacques ran London, Pierre was responsible for New York. He also had a sister, Suzanne, who married Jacques Worth of the couture family.
Early career and Russia
Pierre's early career took an unusual turn when Alfred sent him to Russia to study the political and economic conditions under Tsar Nicholas II and to observe the working methods of Peter Carl Fabergé, then at the height of his reputation. Cartier had been opening temporary exhibition branches in St Petersburg, and this reconnaissance shaped Pierre's understanding of how luxury goods crossed cultural borders. The deteriorating political climate in Russia eventually led the family to redirect their international ambitions towards the United States.
New York
Pierre had first opened the London branch, at 4 New Burlington Street, before handing it to his younger brother Jacques around 1906. Jacques then moved it to 175 New Bond Street in 1909, the same year Pierre established the New York branch at 712 Fifth Avenue. Success was immediate. His clients came from the great industrialist and financial dynasties of the era: the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, the Fords, the Rockefellers, and many others including the Leeds, Unzue, Blumenthal, and Lydig families. Pierre's particular talent was for personal relationships; he became not just jeweller but friend to many of these households. Among his notable commissions was a natural pearl necklace made for Marjorie Merriweather Post.
On 11 November 1913, Pierre staged an exhibition of "Jewels Created by Messieurs Cartier from the Hindoo, Persian, Arab, Russian and Chinese" in New York — of the fifty pieces on display, twenty were in the Indian style that Jacques had brought back from his travels. It was a bold statement of intent in the American market.
One of the most celebrated early transactions was the sale of the Hope Diamond, briefly in the Cartier family's possession, before being sold to Evalyn Walsh McLean. According to Éric Nussbaum, Director of the Cartier Art Collection in Geneva, Louis Cartier was in Russia at the time, delivering a Kokoshnik tiara set with large cabochon sapphires and diamonds to the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. Pierre telegraphed him from New York with the news: the 45.52-carat sapphire-blue diamond had been sold to Evalyn Walsh McLean, who had already bought another historic stone, the Star of the East, three years earlier.
The 653 Fifth Avenue acquisition
Pierre's most famous transaction was securing the firm's permanent New York home. He had identified a Renaissance-style palazzo at 653 Fifth Avenue, built between 1903 and 1905 by architect Robert W. Gibson, which belonged to Mr and Mrs Morton F. Plant. Mrs Plant, twenty-three years younger than her husband, had long admired a double-strand natural pearl necklace in Cartier's possession (fifty-five and seventy-three pearls respectively, valued at around one million dollars). An exchange was proposed: the necklace for the building. The Plants moved out; Cartier moved in.
The story has an epilogue that tracks what happened to natural pearl values after cultured pearls entered the market. Following Morton Plant's death, his widow remarried, and when she in turn died, the necklace passed to auction at Parke Bernet on 23 January 1957, where it sold for $151,000. The building, meanwhile, had been declared a Landmark of the City of New York, protecting its facade from significant alteration.
The First World War
On 14 April 1911, Pierre and Elma's daughter Marion was born at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The press described Pierre simply as a "wealthy Frenchman" — Cartier was still relatively unknown in America. Marion would be their only child.
During the First World War, Pierre put himself and his own Rolls-Royce at the disposal of Colonel Ponsard as a chauffeur, and donated his Mercedes to the French army. His home at Neuilly was opened to doctors and nurses from the nearby American Hospital of Paris. He and his wife Elma both fell ill during the war and returned to New York in 1917, reuniting with Marion, who had been in the care of her aunt and uncle during the conflict.
Franco-American work
Pierre felt a personal responsibility for relations between France and the United States. From 1929 he was president of the French Hospital of New York, vice president of the French Chamber of Commerce in New York, vice president of the Alliance Française in New York, and founder and president of the Franco-American Council of Commerce and Industry.
He received the Légion d'Honneur as Chevalier in 1921. In 1929, Ambassador Paul Claudel elevated him to Officier, a distinction that carried a personal dimension when, in 1932, Pierre's daughter Marion visited the Claudel family at their property in Brangues in the Dauphiné and became engaged to Paul Claudel's son Pierre. The couple married in New York in April 1933. Pierre Claudel subsequently joined Cartier, beginning a collaboration with his father-in-law that lasted some twenty-five years. Pierre was elevated to Commandeur in 1938.
Later career and the Second World War
Pierre organised a fundraising drive in New York during the Second World War for the Allied cause. When Pierre Claudel was taken prisoner by the Germans near Strasbourg in 1940, Pierre worked to secure his release. He also helped Claude, the son of Louis Cartier and his Hungarian-born wife the Countess Almássy, leave Budapest at a dangerous moment.
Jacques Cartier died at Dax in 1941. Louis, who had spent much of the Occupation in New York, died there in 1942. At Pierre's suggestion, Marion and Pierre Claudel took over the Paris operations, while Claude moved to New York.
Retirement
On 4 December 1962, the New York Times announced the sale of Cartier New York to an outside consortium. The Fifth Avenue branch Pierre had built over half a century was leaving the family. The Paris and London branches remained in family hands, but not for long.
Pierre and Elma retired in 1947 to the Villa "Elma" on the shore of Lake Geneva: a former boathouse that had once formed part of the estate of the Château de Penthes, itself associated with Empress Joséphine. They lived there quietly until Elma's death in 1959. Pierre died on 27 October 1964. They had one daughter, Marion, and five granddaughters.
Marion Cartier subsequently bequeathed documents and some jewellery to the University of Saint Louis, in memory of her mother Elma Rumsey Cartier.
Sources
- Éric Nussbaum, “Pierre-Camille Cartier (1878–1964)”, Fondation Pierre Cartier, September 2001. Nussbaum was Director of the Cartier Art Collection, Geneva. The foundation's website is now defunct; the biography is archived at the Wayback Machine
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 3 (“Pierre, 1902–1919”) and ch. 6 (“New York: Mid-1920s”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 121, 129 et al.
- Wikipedia: Pierre Cartier
