The Second World War affected the three Cartier branches in fundamentally different ways, reflecting both their geography and the different stages of leadership each had reached by 1939.
Cartier London
Cartier London at 175 New Bond Street remained open throughout the war, including through the Blitz of 1940 and 1941. The English Art Works workshop on the upper floors, which had produced much of the London branch's most demanding jewellery, was operating at reduced capacity as craftsmen were drafted or redirected to war work. The showroom below continued to trade. Engagement rings remained in steady demand throughout the war years. Jean-Jacques Cartier, who was building his knowledge of the London operation during this period, was part of the branch's wartime continuity.
It was in these conditions, around 1940, that Cartier London produced an iris brooch for Daisy Fellowes: a flower in diamonds and sapphires with an emerald stem. The fact that a piece of this quality was made in the middle of the Blitz, with a reduced workshop and craftsmen absent, became part of the brooch's story when it sold at auction decades later.
Cartier Paris
The German occupation of Paris from June 1940 until the Liberation in August 1944 fundamentally altered the conditions under which Cartier Paris operated. The firm continued but in circumstances shaped entirely by the occupation. Louis Devaux, who had risen from personal secretary to Louis Cartier to become a director of the Paris house, helped keep the business running through the occupation years.
The Death of Louis Cartier
Louis Cartier died in New York in 1942 during the war. He had been the artistic and intellectual engine of Cartier Paris for four decades, developing the garland style, the relationships with Indian maharajas, and the partnerships that had produced the mystery clock and the Tank watch. Pierre Cartier survived the war, continuing to run the New York branch, but the firm's leadership was effectively passing to the next generation.
The Aftermath
The war's end in 1945 left Cartier, like much of the European luxury trade, needing to rebuild its client base and workshop capacity. The maharaja era, which had been Cartier's most spectacular source of commissions in the 1920s, was already drawing to a close as Indian independence approached in 1947. The world that had commissioned the great Indian pieces, the Russian-inspired jewels, and the Belle Époque tiaras had been replaced, through two wars and a depression, by something considerably different.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), chs. 9–10
- Wikipedia: World War II and Cartier
