Unboxing Some Seriously Sparkly Cartier Jewels

I'm here today to show you three beautiful jewels from the permanent collections at the V&A. Each jewel is by Cartier and each is the most beautiful original red leather case. Cartier today is perhaps one of the most famous names in jewellery. For over a hundred years their designs and the aesthetics have stood out head and shoulders above many other jewellers. Here we have the most beautiful red leather case with gilded tooling and inside our magnificent Manchester tiara. We have the magic word Cartier but it's actually stamped with the two locations that Cartier had at the time. The first is Paris Rue de la Paix, the second is London New Burlington Street and this gives us a dating for the tiara because New Burlington Street was only founded in 1902 and that was their first location outside of Paris and indeed our spectacular Manchester tiara was made in 1903. So the tiara was commissioned by Consuelo Manchester. Consuelo married the Viscount Mandeville who would become the 8th Duke of Manchester. In a letter to the Times she was described as one of the first American ladies who married into the great English families and it was said that she took society by storm. You see one of the elements that really gives it its spectacular nature are these pendant elements just slightly swinging and they're set in between these scrolling hearts with almost flaming elements at the top. So you can see how this would have really caught the light as she walked. These little sea scrolls at the back which some say stand for Consuelo but I'm not sure, were actually set with paste which is a glass diamond simulant. So these aren't actually diamonds but they've clearly been added on to extend even the size of this already magnificent jewel. So Consuelo came to Cartier in 1903 to commission the tiara and at that time Cartier often sent out different workshops to actually make up their jewels and in this case the tiara was made by a workshop in Paris by the name of Georges Arnichard. Arnichard actually made several Cartier jewels in the period but this might be one of the most spectacular. The style of the jewel is really important because it's been made in what we call today the Garland style which is very much based on 18th century French style. You think of the scrolls and ribbons and tassels of Marie Antoinette and it was said that Louis Cartier actually asked his workmen to go into the streets of Paris with their notebooks and to take inspiration from the architecture and ironwork of 18th century France. We often find in Victorian and early 20th century jewellery that elements might be removable or detachable and that jewellery was convertible because of course the jewels themselves were so valuable and in this case we have not only a tiara but also elements that would convert into brooches. So these first three flaming hearts could each be removed with these tiny screw fittings and converted into brooches. We can imagine the tiara would have been worn at many spectacular events but perhaps none so more as the coronation in 1911 of King George VI and Queen Mary and it was actually a lady called Helena Zimmerman who was the daughter-in-law of Consuelo who wore this to the coronation. The tiara is actually mounted in the more old-fashioned way of silver and gold. Silver on the front because that makes the diamonds look white and gold at the back which almost helped to prevent tarnishing should it touch the skin. But it still is a very light piece despite the mounting because of these huge openwork scrolls but in that way we see that it looks forwards and back. In one way it looks forwards to the new century, to the electric light not just candlelight to the new materials of the new diamond deposits from the 19th century that gave us all of these great white jewels of the 1900s but back to the gold and silver setting. So it's a zeitgeist of its age really, a turning point in the history of jewellery. This is a particularly special jewellery box because it's not just a case to keep the jewellery safe but it's a case to display it and of course it's a case by Cartier. We have three locations printed on the silk inside Cartier Paris, Cartier London and Cartier New York but we now have a dating for this particular jewel because the location in London is now New Bond Street which was founded in 1909. In addition to the case we also have an extra bit of jewellery history on the jewel itself because there is a particular poinçon or jewellery stamp which tells us that the jewel might have been made specifically in 1910 and that is the rhino's head which was just used in that year for platinum jewels made in France. So let's talk about the style of the jewel itself. So this brooch like many from the early 1900s made by Cartier is mounted with diamonds in platinum and it's the platinum that gives it its fine fine mounting. Platinum was a very very hard durable white metal that Louis Cartier was really a pioneer in its working at the beginning of the 20th century and it revolutionised the making of jewellery. One of the things it did was it helped diamonds look like they were floating in mid-air and if you look in detail at some of the mountings you see these lovely little beads that we call a mill grain setting all set around the diamonds in collets and it's what gives them their very delicate and very lacy light look. We can see elements that we would call Islamic. These finials at the top remind us of the lobed arches of architecture and these little buds here are like the tulip buds we see on Iznik pottery. So this is very much in the style of Islamic art from 1910 but it's also mounted in this delicate white mounting that reminds us of the garland style. This much more French early light mounting and they seem to have been developed almost in tandem. This whiteness, this flatness, this delicacy but with inspiration that comes from all over the world. So this isn't just one jewel. What we have here are three jewels in one because while we have a brooch pendant fitting at the back so you can see it can be worn pinned to a dress, this is actually detachable and it's only when I go back to the case do we see the secrets behind the jewel because one thing I always look for in old cases is a little velvet tab behind the setting because here we have a secret compartment for all the different fittings for the other parts of the jewel because it made not only a pendant brooch but here we have a ribbon for a necklace together with an extra fitting for a brooch which would have been able to be attached to the bottom here. Now I'm actually going to try to undo one of these fittings to show you how it worked because we have a very special Cartier screwdriver. The two-prong screwdriver was made specifically for these particular screws and I'm going to see if this can come off and we can see how it would have been put together as a different jewel. There we go. So you see how this would have been removable for one brooch fitting. Another brooch fitting could have been put at the top. We've got one down here or our beautiful pendant necklace. So fast forward 30 years. We are now from 1910 going to 1941. Here we have a beautiful red leather and gilded Cartier case and inside some serious bling. This particularly sparkly diamond and platinum brooch was commissioned by Ernest Schweiger in 1941 and he had it made for his wife Adele Dixon who was an actress and the family name is quite important because it was his father Imre Schweiger who was the first Cartier connection because Imre met Jacques Cartier the youngest of the three brothers in India around 1911 at the Delhi Durbar where Imre became a great representative for Cartier introducing Jacques amongst others to many of the Maharajas. So this brooch is actually a clip. So the actual clip fitting is really quite strong as is the design and this was made for Cartier London. We have a beautiful signature just here the Cartier London inscription and we see here how it was made to be worn possibly on a dress on a jacket and we see really quite strongly what is called a Ruyi element from Chinese design with this scrolling pattern together with the two diamonds in the centre. It also reminds me of some of those architectural elements in Islamic art and it shows us how the influences across the world really inspired the Cartier designers of the period. But my favourite part is how three-dimensional the design is. You see from the side how it's stepped up it's almost architectural in design the way the diamonds lift one to the other with the different cuts of brilliance and baguette cuts and for me this is very much late deco jewellery that shows us we are really in the 1940s. I hope you've enjoyed looking at these three beautiful Cartier jewels with me today. When I see jewellery like this it brings me joy and that is the purpose of this type of jewellery to go from the spectacular Manchester tiara to our delicate beautifully made pendant brooch and our strong art deco clip. You can appreciate the history in these pieces but they still resonate with us in terms of beauty and craftsmanship today.