Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary Book

Cartier! The name still works its magic. But it was a long climb from the 1847 launch of Louis-Fran&c184;ois Cartier's family business in the shadow of Paris's Eglise Saint-Eustache. The company's fortunes paralleled the rise of wealthy tycoons, rich on colony profits, and reached an early peak in the years before World War I. But it was under the three brothers Louis, Pierre and Jacques that Cartier became Cartier as we know it, the emblem par excellence of the Cocktail Age; one simply had to have that monogrammed tin-opener, that diamond belt, that gold toothpick. Jewellery expert Hans Nadelhoffer was well placed to tell Cartier's glamorous story, first published in 1984 and now available for the first time in large, glossy paperback. Given the full run of the company's extensive archives, he tells the Cartier story, full of juicy anecdotes, and, importantly, brings to centre-stage Jeanne Toussaint, the woman whose taste became the litmus test for the Cartier brothers' creations, despite her complete lack of design skill: "My inability to draw qualifies me to assess the work of others". And for those who just want to drool at the pretty things, Nadelhoff drenches his narrative in nearly 500 illustrations, 200 of them in gorgeous Cartier technicolour.--Alan StewartRead More