Unique Cartier Clocks : The Pendulette à Chevalet (Ep. 3/4)
#AntiqueClock"Phillips is honored to present a collection of four unique museum-quality Art Deco Cartier Clocks hailing from a prestigious private collection across auctions in Hong Kong and New York.
Featured in The New York Watch Auction: X (8 & 9 June), the present clock also known as the Pendulette à Chevalet, from the 1920s and inspired by the Far East.
It is fitted with a striking jade bangle around the dial, a nod to the Asian influence on design, and made to look like an easel. Lotus motifs, symbolizing purity, rebirth, and divinity, further adorn the rock crystal.
Our Senior Consultant, Aurel Bacs, sat down with Geneva's Head of Sale, Tiffany To, and our Worldwide Head of Jewellery, Benoit Repellin, to discuss the discovery. "
The format is a bit different from what we usually see.
It's not full rock crystal.
It's really a jade bangle that encloses the rock crystal itself.
And it's very different, I guess, from what we usually see
for those desk clocks from Cartier from the time.
Overall, it's a very stunning piece.
You have the jade, you have the enamel, gold, rock crystal and diamonds.
And as we did more research, actually, we found its sibling
that actually resides in the Cartier collection.
And it's very similar to the present piece.
It just has burgundy lotus motifs.
The lotus motifs you're referring to are these three on the altar.
And in fact, Longines also supplied a movement.
So we believe that Cartier made a small series of jade bangle clocks
like this during this period,
with all movements supplied by Longines at the time.
Do you think, in your educated guess,
this is a bangle that was made in China and then found its way again,
like with this piece here, into the desk time piece?
Or did Cartier make these bangles?
I do think it was an original bangle.
But also, as you can probably explain,
there is a whole significance also of the jadeite bangle
in the Asian-Chinese culture.
And even jadeite bangle themselves reach very high prices at auction
because of the whole significance and the importance of the jade.
Exactly. So I would say that definitely Cartier
had also gone to the Far East for inspiration for this clock.
The jade itself, it's a symbol of purity.
It's said to bring good luck, good fortune.
And it's almost like a talisman
because traditionally, women and men, they wear jade items
and they never take them off.
And it's said that these jade, they kind of live with the human
as they age together.
So basically, we started off with a most likely antique jade bangle.
Then we have the rock crystal sort of ring
that holds the diamond-encrusted Roman numerals.
The dial is 18-carat yellow gold.
Yes.
Then we have black enamel that is used not only here on the dial
but then for these lotus-leaf motifs.
Again, diamond-encrusted hour and minute hands.
And then you have this easel in rock crystal
that makes it stand on your coiffeuse, you said before,
or your desk or in the library.
Beautiful item. Absolutely beautiful item.
With a more contemporary box that is not the original one
but very much in the style of the other two.
Indeed.