Art and Design

Reference

• Art Deco at Cartier The geometric, architecturally inspired style Cartier embraced in the 1920s and 30s, characterised by bold contrasts, strong outlines, and the influence of Cubism and Egyptomania.
• Art Nouveau The decorative arts movement of the 1890s to early 1900s, characterised by flowing organic forms. Cartier is not primarily associated with it: Louis Cartier deliberately moved the firm toward the geometric Garland Style instead.
• Bahrain Pearl Diving Heritage The pearl diving tradition of Bahrain, a practice largely unchanged for centuries when Jacques Cartier visited in 1912, now recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site and a living connection between the Cartier family history and the Gulf.
• Belle Époque The period from roughly 1880 to 1914 when Cartier, under Louis Cartier's creative direction, refined the light, lacy jewellery style that would define the house's early international reputation.
• Coronation of Edward VII The 1902 coronation that cemented Cartier's position at the summit of European jewellery, producing the phrase most associated with the firm's royal standing.
• Delhi Durbar 1911 The Delhi Durbar of December 1911, held to mark the coronation of King George V as Emperor of India, was attended by Jacques Cartier as a business visit that proved transformational for the firm's Indian relationships.
• Dispersal of the Romanov Jewels The sale and dispersal of Russian imperial jewellery following the 1917 Revolution, which put extraordinary stones onto the market and brought Cartier into the centre of a trade that transformed European jewellery in the 1920s and 1930s.
• Egyptian Revival The decorative style that swept through Cartier's output in the 1920s following the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb: scarabs, lotus flowers, falcon heads, and hieroglyphic inscriptions in jewellery and objects.
• Garland Style The light, lace-like Belle Époque aesthetic Cartier perfected around the turn of the twentieth century, made possible by using platinum rather than gold as a setting metal.
• Indian Style at Cartier The design vocabulary drawing on Mughal India that Cartier developed from the early twentieth century, characterised by carved unfaceted gemstones in gold settings, distinct from the broader Persian and Islamic influence.
• Jacques Cartier's Ceylon Travels Jacques Cartier's repeated journeys to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from the 1920s, sourcing sapphires and pearls from the island's gem dealers and establishing relationships that fed directly into the firm's jewellery.
• Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, 1925 The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925, gave the Art Deco movement its retrospective name and marked the high point of the interwar decorative arts moment in which Cartier's most celebrated work was produced.
• Paris Exposition Universelle (1900) The 1900 World's Fair in Paris at which Cartier exhibited and which marked the peak of the Belle Époque, establishing the firm's international reputation at a moment of extraordinary creative confidence.
• Persian and Islamic Influence The strand of Cartier's output from roughly the 1900s onwards that drew on Persian, Mughal, and broader Islamic decorative traditions, drawing on Jacques Cartier's travels and the house's engagement with Indian maharajas.
• The Abdication Crisis and Coronation of George VI The abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936 and the coronation of George VI in May 1937, a moment that brought Wallis Simpson's Cartier jewels to international attention and marked a transition in Cartier London's royal connections.
• The Ballets Russes Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which performed in Paris from 1909 onwards, transformed European decorative arts with its vivid colours, Orientalist costumes, and fusion of Eastern and Western visual traditions, feeding directly into Cartier's design direction from the 1910s.
• The Cultured Pearl Revolution The introduction of commercially viable cultured pearls in the 1920s and 1930s collapsed the natural pearl market by approximately 85%, upending a trade on which Cartier's business model had been substantially built.
• The Great Depression and Cartier The economic collapse that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929 transformed Cartier's client base, ended the era of the natural pearl, and shaped the leaner aesthetic of 1930s Art Deco jewellery.
• The Gulf Pearl Trade The centuries-old trade in natural pearls from the Persian Gulf, which drew Jacques Cartier to Bahrain in 1912 on what he described as the most important mission of his eastern travels.
• Windsor Jewels Sale, 1987 The April 1987 Sotheby's Geneva auction of the Duchess of Windsor's jewellery, which realised over $50 million against an estimate of $7.5 million and included 87 pieces by Cartier.
• World War I and Cartier The First World War disrupted Cartier's workshops and clientele, altered the social landscape that had sustained the firm's Belle Époque business, and produced one of its most enduring designs directly from the conflict itself.
• World War II and Cartier The Second World War closed Cartier's continental workshops, kept the London branch trading through the Blitz, and ended with the death of Louis Cartier in 1942 and the effective dispersal of the founding generation's leadership.