Wallis Simpson (19 June 1896 – 24 April 1986), Duchess of Windsor, and her husband the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII) were among the most celebrated Cartier clients of the mid-twentieth century. Her engagement ring from the Prince of Wales came from Cartier, and the collection she assembled over decades became one of the most closely studied bodies of mid-century jewellery.
The Windsor collection has attracted sustained attention, most dramatically at the 1987 Sotheby's Geneva sale where her jewellery realised over $50 million against an estimate of $7.5 million: partly for the quality of the pieces, partly for the biographical resonance they carry. The Flamingo brooch, completed in 1940 in rubies, sapphires, emeralds, citrine, and diamonds, is the single most reproduced item from the collection. The Cartier connection runs through several of the most significant items, including work from the London branch under Jacques Cartier and Jean-Jacques Cartier. The Windsors also commissioned from Van Cleef and Arpels at Place Vendôme, and the collection as a whole reflects the overlapping client relationships that characterised the Paris luxury trade in this period.
The abdication crisis intersects directly with the Cartier history: the engagement ring was made by Cartier London. The story of the ring is told in Wallis Simpson's Cartier London Engagement Ring and in The Cartiers, ch. 8.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 8 (“Diamonds and Depression: The 1930s”) and ch. 10 (“Cousins in Austerity, 1945–1956”)
- Wikipedia: Wallis Simpson
