Episode 2: The Cartiers and The Maharajas

About This Talk

Jacques Cartier spent one morning on a pearl-fishing boat in the Persian Gulf. The divers went down again and again and could barely find a single good pearl between them. Back in Baroda, the Maharaja had a necklace of seven perfectly matched strands — a thousand natural pearls — assembled over more than a decade. It was said to be the finest pearl necklace in the world.

Joined by Maharani Radhikaraje Gaekwad, speaking live from Lakshmi Vilas Palace in Vadodara — one of the largest private residences in the world, four times the size of Buckingham Palace — Francesca explores the relationship between the Cartier brothers and the Maharajas of India, with a particular focus on the legendary collection at Baroda. The webinar traces the story from the early 20th century, when Jacques Cartier first made his way to India for the 1911 Delhi Durbar with his cases packed full of jewels, to the correspondence that followed over the next three decades. It explores how the relationship worked in practice: Jacques sketching the Baroda crown jewels by hand at life-size scale so that his London designers could work from his drawings, and the Maharani of Baroda — who he noted was the one really in control — directing which pieces she wanted updated or reset in a more modern style. Among the treasures discussed are the seven-strand Baroda pearl necklace, assembled over more than a decade and described as the finest in the world; the Nassak diamond, a stone with a history stretching back to the Peshwahs of Maharashtra; the Moon of Baroda diamond, later loaned to Marilyn Monroe; and the 1927 Baroda Crown project — a collaboration that continued for years before quietly being set aside. The webinar closes with Princess Indira Devi of Cooch Behar, described by those who knew her as one of the most stylish women of her time, and a Cartier piece that went unrecognised in the Baroda collection for nearly ninety years before Francesca identified it.