The Cartiers by Francesca Cartier Brickell is a history not only of the renowned jewelry house itself, but of the family who founded it. As the great-granddaughter of Jacques Cartier — one of the three brothers who built the firm into an international success — the author tells the story from a personal perspective, tracing the dynasty from the company’s beginning in the early 19th century through its sale in
the 1970s.
Boxed quotes from conversations she had with her grandfather, Jean-Jacques Cartier, amplify the narrative. Among other things, these center on a cache of letters and family papers she came across, which started her on the path of writing the book.
“It’s been a fascinating journey, reading 100-year-old letters in spidery French, retracing my ancestors’ steps and tracking down jewels depicted in sketches I’ve found in fading diaries. At times, it’s been real detective work, interviewing people, sometimes thousands of miles away, to help me piece together the puzzle of the past,” recounts Brickell. “Some of it has confirmed what I’ve read elsewhere, but much of it is new.”
The three brothers
Overall, Brickell says, “the literature tends to focus on — and attribute Cartier’s success to — one of the brothers: Louis Joseph Cartier, the founder’s eldest grandson, who ran Cartier Paris. Certainly, he was a creative genius; he pioneered the idea of the first men’s wristwatch, and it was his aesthetic vision, and especially his love of Persian art, that helped shape the ‘Cartier style.’ However, what I’ve realized is the extent to which the worldwide renown of the family firm was down to his two brothers, Pierre and Jacques, plus the legacy of his father and his grandfather, Louis Francois Cartier, who founded Cartier
in 1847.”
A common ambition back when they were children “was to become the leading jewelry firm in the world, and they achieved it together in Paris, New York and London,” she says. Pierre, the middle brother — who opened the New York branch in 1909 — “was a brilliant businessman who understood the value of being global before globalization was even a term.”
While not artistic, Pierre was “a grandmaster in sales and marketing,” the author says. One early example, soon after the American branch opened, was his buying and selling of the notoriously “cursed” 45.52-carat, deep-blue Hope diamond. “Pierre correctly predicted that the client, Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, would ensure the diamond’s ongoing publicity for years to come (at her famous parties, she would tie the stone around the neck of her Great Dane or play ‘Hide the Hope,’ when she hid the diamond in the garden and instructed her puzzled guests to try and find it).”
The youngest brother, Jacques — Brickell’s great-grandfather, who ran Cartier London — was both a designer and a businessman. “Like his father, Alfred, he was also the family’s gemstone expert who traveled to the exotic East to source pearls, rubies, emeralds and sapphires, helping Cartier earn a reputation as the jeweler with the best colored gemstones in the world,” she relates. “In case he needed to value a jewel, he traveled with his trusty ‘killer stones’: a perfect pigeon-blood-red ruby, a cornflower-blue sapphire and a vivid, pure green emerald.”
Drive to create
With a family credo of “Never copy, only create,” the Cartier brothers introduced many innovative jewelry pieces. One early creative step Louis took at the turn of the 20th century was to use platinum to mount his diamond jewels, says Brickell, calling it “a breakthrough moment.”
At the time, she notes, “it was hard for jewelers to even source platinum; it was predominantly an industrial metal. In fact, Louis noticed its strength and flexibility after seeing it holding up the springs underneath a railway carriage. Entranced by its gleaming brightness and flexibility, he and his father asked the workshops they worked with to create a platinum alloy that could be used in their jewels. Before long, Cartier’s platinum creations became a status symbol in Paris, London and New York.”
Listing some of her favorite Cartier creations, she cites the “Indian-inspired 1930s tutti frutti pieces, the 1920s Egyptian renaissance pieces where antique faiences — some dating as far back as 500 BCE — are mounted in more Art Deco settings, and platinum and diamond garland-style jewels of the early 20th century, such as an exquisite 1909 tiara with detachable pear-shaped diamonds.”
She also highlights “the 1912 platinum and diamond devant de corsage commissioned by Solomon Joel, the owner of South African diamond mines. This corsage ornament was auctioned this year, in the Maharajas and Mughal Magnificence sale in New York, and it reached over $10 million.”
‘The human story’
More than anything else, Brickell’s work “tries to tell the human story,” she says. “There have been countless books written about Cartier’s creative legacy, but this is a book on the people behind all the diamonds.”
For instance, she recounts, “Louis-Francois, the firm’s founder, was born into a poor, working-class Parisian family. His mother was a washerwoman: That’s about as far from luxury as you could get. This book follows him as he tries desperately to break out of poverty, and then his descendants in the rises and falls of the family firm.”
In that vein, she says, “I was lucky enough to draw on so much original source material — family letters, diaries and telegrams — which helped me understand the motivations and fears of my ancestors, their loves and losses. This is what I try to share in the book, as much as possible in their own words, to help others understand them as people, not just as myths.”
The Cartiers will be published by Ballantine on November 26.
Image: Getty; Grzegorz Czapski/Alamy Stock PhotoArticle from the Rapaport Magazine - November 2019. To subscribe click here.