Francesca Cartier Brickell on the early years of Cartier, Hope Diamond and ‘Hindou jewels'

All three of the brothers were charismatic and had their own unique talents – and fortunately those talents were complementary. So while Louis was a creative genius, coming up with creations like the first wristwatch for men, early art deco jewels or the almost magical mystery clocks, Pierre was a master salesman, knowing exactly how best to entice each client while never appearing as if he was selling at all. Jacques was more rounded – he was something of an artist like Louis and a businessman like Pierre -- but as you say, he was the gemstone expert. His many trips to India buying gems enabled the Cartiers to build a reputation as the jewellery house with some of the best gems in the world.

Yes, Louis particularly – so my grandfather told me – didn’t believe in advertising, as he worried that it might demean the Maison among royal clients to be seen to advertise in papers or magazines. So, instead, the brothers tended to focus more on word of mouth. One way to get people talking about them – at least in the early years of the 20^th century in New York – was to sell some seriously large, important or even notorious gems. The Hope Diamond fitted the bill on all counts: A 45-carat blue and supposedly cursed diamond. When Pierre Cartier managed to sell it to social heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, Cartier’s name in America went from relative obscurity to being the talk of the town. From a business perspective, the sale didn’t actually end up making Cartier a financial profit (especially after legal fees – the sale process was far from straight-forward) but this was more than offset by the way it established Cartier’s position in the new world as the jeweller of the biggest gems to the wealthiest Americans. Building on that, in the 1920s, Pierre Cartier came to embrace marketing, working with the pioneering Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who became subsequently known as the father of public relations.

Enormously significant. When Jacques travelled to India in 1911, it was to meet with the Maharajas and try and gain their future custom. What he wasn’t expecting from his first trip was how he would be inspired by the culture and his new surroundings to create a new style of jewellery for his Western clients. He would sketch what he saw -- from motifs on fabrics to carvings on temples to the outline of buildings. He had such a respect for Indian culture -- he wrote that, in the ten centuries that preceded our era, it was India that reigned supreme in the artistic world. So what ended up happening was a symbiotic relationship: The Maharajas would end up asking Cartier to reset their jewels in a more European fashion, while back in the West, Cartier would be creating Eastern-inspired jewels for its European and American clients. It was a win-win. Added to that were the gems that Jacques was able to bring from India (as the gem-trading capital of the world) and you begin to have an idea how significant the country was for Cartier. But not only that – if it wasn’t for the ongoing custom of significant Indian clients during the years of the Great Depression, Cartier may not have even survived. After all many of their most important traditional clients suddenly saw their vast fortunes shrink to nothing: The Maharajas meanwhile, unaffected by the Crash over in the West, gave the Cartiers some of their largest ever commissions.

Jacques buying gems.

Apparently, it was during an evening spent at the fashionable Parisian restaurant Maxims that Santos first told his friend Louis the difficulty he was having checking his pocket watch while flying (he couldn’t risk taking his hands off the controls). It was as a result of this meeting that Louis would come up with the first wristwatch for men: The Santos. Alberto Santos-Dumont was a famous Brazilian aviator who lived in Paris and was quite a character. He enjoyed popping out for a night on the town in one of his flying machines and tying it to a lamppost while he popped into the nearest bar or restaurant for a glass of champagne! Louis, who also loved flying (and was a member of the main Parisian flying club of the time) became friends with Santos and would join him for dinner at the aviator’s house (where waiters had to be agile, climbing step-ladders to serve the guests seated on very high chairs at a very high table!). The men got along well: both determined to push the boundaries of what had gone before, whether that be in the art of jewelry and timekeeping, or flying.

Ahh well, this changes all the time! I do love the Indian-style pieces though, including those that have subsequently become known as the ‘tutti-frutti’ jewels but which Jacques called his ‘Hindou jewels.’ In these ones, carved sapphires, rubies and emeralds were combined in a glorious explosion of colour, and the inspiration came directly from Jacques’ trips to India: “Out there everything is flooded with the wonderful Indian sunlight”, he explained. “One does not see as in the English light, he is only conscious that here is a blaze of red, and there of green or yellow. It is all like an impressionistic painting. Nothing is clearly defined, and there is but one vivid impression of undreamed gorgeousness and wealth”.