Paris’s Grand Palais hosts a knockout jewellery show writes Maia Adams, FT
Across the centuries jewellery has been deployed as a statement of power, desire, skill, sentiment and status. And as such, it has the ability to shed light on the lives of our forebears – and indeed our present-day selves – in a way that feels intimate and personal. This narrative is what makes it special to me, and if the current plethora of jewellery-related retrospectives – from the Jewels by JAR exhibition running at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to the V&A’s remarkable Pearls and the Museum of London’s The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels – are anything to go by, I’m not alone in my passion for storytelling.
This December, jewellery lovers have one further date for their diaries. Cartier: Style and History opens at Paris’s Grand Palais on December 4 and runs to February 16, 2014. Billed as “a voyage into the creative DNA of the Maison”, among the 300 preparatory drawings and some 600 pieces of jewellery, objects, watches and clocks on display are deco-period diamond hair ornaments, a brooch inspired by Les Ballets Russes and a gem-encrusted Tutti Frutti bracelet that takes as its design cue the dynamism of Indian jewellery – each offering insights into the prevailing fashions of a swath of eras, genres and cultures.
The exhibition also lifts the lid on how the sometimes-eccentric demands of Cartier’s famous clients led to the maison’s most iconic designs. Standout pieces include the Maharaja of Patiala’s ceremonial necklace set with no fewer than 2,930 diamonds, the Duchess of Windsor’s signature animal pins, a necklace fashioned for actress María Félix after she took her live crocodile into a Cartier boutique to act as a muse, and articulated tiger ear-clips owned by Barbara Hutton – the infamous society heiress who also purchased the Romanov emeralds from Cartier and had her Rolls-Royce painted to match their hue.
Such a clamouring for glittering retrospectives reflects a growing interest in archive-inspired design. Capitalising on a pervading sense of nostalgia, and the desire among consumers to invest in pieces with a pronounced pedigree, savvy luxury brands are creating collections that showcase not only their craftsmanship, but also their heritage. And much of this involves creating fresh takes on archive designs.
Cartier’s Trinity ring and the Love bracelet – originals of which feature in the exhibition – have undergone just such a treatment. The former inspired the 2012 introduction of the Trinity Twist (£32,600, first picture) with pink gold, diamonds and kunzite, while a new, diamond solitaire version will be available to buy this coming January. The Love bracelet – originally a slender bangle – has been re-imagined as an attitude-packed 18ct pink-gold cuff that is set with diamonds: the Love Radical bracelet (price on request, second picture). Both of these pieces, and the many others that constitute Cartier’s prolific output, add a new chapter to the story of a brand that remains quirky, clever and ineffably cool.
