Among Cartier’s trivia are several precious items from the turn of the century: a white agate chick with diamond eyes and gold feet depicted emerging from a chalcedony eggshell, and a tortoise-shell and enamel mustache comb links of london. The most dated object may well be the miniature camera on a tripod, which serves as a picture frame for a photograph the size of a postage stamp.
Cartier’s first panthers appeared on watches in 1914 and by the end of World War I the motif was fashionable in jewelry. Jungle beasts proliferated in the 20’s under the direction of Jeanne Toussaint Links of London Charms, Louis Cartier’s lover and the firm’s arbiter of taste until her death in 1978. Tigers were added in the 50’s to satisfy the Duchess of Windsor’s penchant for striped cats. A glittering example on view is the Duchess’s gold lorgnette, its handle in the shape of an emerald-eyed tiger Links of London Necklaces. Cartier paid $146,667 for it in 1987 at the Sotheby’s auction in Geneva of her estate.
WHILE THE EXHIBITION includes bibelots crafted almost since Cartier’s founding in 1847, the more interesting pieces are from 1910 to 1940, the jeweler’s golden era, when the firm was ruled by Louis Cartier, grandson of the founder Louis-Francois. About 80 percent of these artifacts are being shown for the first time at Cartier’s in New York.
A favorite of Ralph Destino, the firm’s chairman in the United States, is a bejeweled enamel and gold paperweight with a lionlike ivory Fu dog perched on top Links of London Bracelets, an object some regard as an exercise in excess. “This is what happened,” Mr. Destino says, “when Louis Cartier addressed the problem of imbuing a mundane object with great style.”