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Episode 10: The Cartiers and their Pearls
About This Talk
What is the most valuable object in the world?
For centuries the answer was neither diamond nor ruby — it was the natural pearl, and the Cartier brothers built an empire on their back. This lecture traces how Jacques Cartier sailed three weeks to Bahrain to negotiate directly with the Pearl Sheikhs, venturing out on the diving boats to watch men plunge to the ocean floor with stone-weighted feet, while fighting off rivals who arrived with donkeys laden with millions of silver francs. Along the way: Elizabeth Taylor's puppy caught playing with La Peregrina; a double-strand necklace that purchased the Fifth Avenue mansion that remains Cartier's New York home today; a Louvre necklace so precious the museum hired an actress to wear it daily on the Champs-Élysées to stop it losing its lustre; and the day Mikimoto collapsed the entire natural pearl market by 85 per cent overnight, ending an era Cartier never adapted to. Delivered at Hillwood Estate, Washington DC — home to one of the world's great Cartier collections — this lecture draws on family letters, personal diaries, and Francesca's own journey to Bahrain, where she dived for pearls herself and met the descendants of the very Sheikhs her great-grandfather once negotiated with.
Key Moments
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