Vors & Pujol was the in-house jewellery workshop that took over Cartier New York's high-jewellery production after American Art Works was dissolved in May 1941. It operated from the upper floors of the firm's Fifth Avenue mansion under Maurice Vors and Albert J. Pujol, with a team that included the craftsmen Ferrari, Jourdain, Chaillou and Meissner; Ms. Dubret in charge of fine polishing; and Ms. Lobaito running the workshop's administration.
The skilled stone setter Henri E. Larrieu would in time take over the workshop entirely. Under his presidency the operation moved out of the Cartier mansion to its own address at 18 West 56th Street, a few blocks north of Pierre Cartier's Fifth Avenue mansion, and was incorporated as Albert J Pujol Inc, the name under which it is still listed in New York jewellery-manufacturing directories. Albert J. Pujol himself, in his later years at the head of the workshop, was quoted in the New York Times predicting that within a generation there might be "no new handmade jewelry".
The fuller story of the two men, the craftsmen they trained, and the work the team produced for the firm in its mid-century decades is in The Cartiers, ch. 10.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), pp. 479, 531, footnote 583n479
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007)
- US Jeweler business directory, "Albert J Pujol Inc", 18 West 56th Street, New York
