The Cartiers

A dynamic group biography studded with design history and high-society dash . . . [This] elegantly wrought narrative bears the Cartier hallmark. The Economist

The astounding (André Leon Talley) story of the family behind the Cartier empire and the three brothers who turned their grandfather s humble Parisian jewelry store into a global luxury icon as told by a great-granddaughter with exclusive access to long-lost family archives

• Ms. Cartier Brickell has done her grandfather proud. The Wall Street Journal*
  *
  The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was Never copy, only create and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents: Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men s wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world s best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry.

  Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family s history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more.

The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm s most iconic jewelry the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Published in the two-hundredth anniversary year of the birth of the dynasty s founder, Louis-François Cartier, this book is a magnificent, definitive, epic social history shown through the deeply personal lens of one legendary family.

Auteur
A graduate in English literature from Oxford University, Francesca Cartier Brickell is a direct descendant of the Cartier family. Her great-great-great grandfather founded Cartier in 1847. Her late grandfather, Jean-Jacques Cartier, was the last of the family to manage and own a branch of the world-famous jewelry firm. Leaving behind a career in finance to focus on independently researching her family history, Francesca has spent over a decade travelling the world in search of the real story behind the Cartiers. She is an accredited GIA jewelry professional and lectures internationally and online on Cartier's illustrious history. She lives with her husband and children in London and the South of France.

Échantillon de lecture
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Louis (1898 1919)

A Spring Wedding

April 30, 1898. Springtime in Paris. Crowds were gathered outside the Church of the Madeleine, an imposing neoclassical building just to the northeast of the Élysée Palace, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sixteen-year-old bride as she arrived with her father. Inside, the Parisian fashion crowd were already at their pews. Eyeing one another s outfits and jostling for the best view of the aisle, they were eager to see what the granddaughter of the world s first celebrity designer would wear on the most important day of her life.

Up by the altar, the good-looking twenty-three-year-old groom was feeling uncomfortable. Under normal circumstances, Louis Cartier would have relished being the center of attention, especially surrounded by the crème de la crème of French society, but this was far from a normal day. Imploringly, he looked toward his father, who signaled encouragingly at the hundreds who had turned out to witness the union of two great families. Or rather, one great family, the Worths, and another family that still aspired to greatness. While the House of Worth was famous for revolutionizing Parisian fashion, the House of Cartier was still relatively unknown.

Just a few days earlier, Louis had gone to his father, Alfred, in desperation. He couldn t marry this girl, he had pleaded. She wasn t right. He understood that an alliance with her family would be good for their business, but what about his life? She would make him miserable. She wasn t like other girls: she was somber one minute, hysterical the next. His fourteen-year-old brother, Jacques, had spotted it too: I spent several afternoons alone with her and I was struck by her strangeness, her melancholy, and her sense of not being completely there.

Later Jacques would recall how, soon after meeting Andrée-Caroline, she had insisted he read several morbid books, something that had surprised him given her young age. While he was reading, she stayed silent for many hours and seemed completely absent of spirit. But occasionally she acted excessively gay for no apparent reason. He couldn t help but judge her to be ill of mind. And he knew what he was talking about. I have . . . witnessed the existence of nervous crises before. He was referring to his mother, Alice.

Louis had begged to call the wedding off. Alfred, who himself had entered into an arranged marriage over two decades earlier for the good of the family firm, would not hear of it. The two ended up having the almightiest row. Jacques, asked by Louis to be present, was shocked by the force of Alfred s reaction: I attended a scene where my father pushed him into marriage, seizing him by the arms and forcefully expressing his concern over the future of the family and the business. . . . Without this obligation in which he was trapped, I am sure that my brother would have broken off the engagement.

But there was no way out. With Louis standing by the altar, the congregation looked back toward the large church doors where the silhouette of Andrée-Caroline appeared next to her father, and with every step that his bride-to-be took toward him, past the exquisitely arranged spring flowers on the end of each pew, Louis tried to master his discomfort. As he lifted her veil, he half-flinched to see a familiar absent look in her eyes. She would go through the motions of the wedding with an unconscious air. Jacques, standing up by the altar alongside his brother, would later remember how Andrée-Caroline s lack of reverence/recollection shocked me . . . I believe her to be ill, a young girl . . . to whom the idea of consent cannot have any value.

If that was so, the newspapers were blissfully unaware. The Paris broadshee