Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary - Softcover

Nadelhoffer, Hans

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500281173 ISBN 13: 9780500281178

Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1999

Synopsis

For almost a century, the name "Cartier" has been synonymous with the finest and most exclusive jewelry in the world: top-quality gems, imaginative and distinctive designs, and the most exquisite workmanship. For tsars and maharajahs, European royalty, stage and opera stars, and American super-millionaires, Cartier has been recognized purveyor of luxurious excellence. The history of this international jewelry firm is recounted here by Hans Nadelhoffer, using Cartier's archives, working designs and photographs showing pieces of jewelry no longer in existence. The result is a full story of the house of Cartier, a social portrait of an age, in which the company's career is traced from its modest beginnings in Paris to its eventual predominance over the world of fashion. Anecdotal as well as technical, this book shows how Cartier set stylistic standards throughout its years of success and gives full credit to the little-known individuals who helped bring this about.

About this title

Review:

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 Stewart

Review:

'Lavishly documents [Cartier's] opulent and long-established house styles and classic designs'
-- The V&A Magazine

'Rich and authenticated... packed with sensational facts and figures'
-- The Scotsman

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0500281173
• ISBN 13: 9780500281178
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312