Cartier London

Through the 1960s, “Swinging London,” as the capital was dubbed by American journalists, was at the front of a revolution in fashion, music, and consumer goods. The Mod subculture, with its roots in a group of rebellious young “modernists,” challenged the current trends. They danced all night and rode around town on motor scooters as postwar austerity made way for youth-focused clothes, psychedelic music, and vibrant pop art.

The fashion for tiaras was long gone, but even diamond necklaces were rarely sold. The older salesmen would nostalgically tell the younger ones about the days when “money was no object” and Cartier jewels were the ultimate status symbol, but in the 1960s, the pace was set by those seeking the unexpected, bold, and new. It wasn’t an easy adjustment for the well-heeled salesmen who equated starched collars and well-cut suits with showing respect: Joseph Allgood recalled being terribly shocked when a group of casually dressed long- haired gentlemen walked into 175 New Bond Street one day (he was later informed they were called the Beatles)…

For Jean-Jacques [Cartier], watches were a key focus. In the years since he had taken over Cartier London, he had dramatically expanded its watch offerings. In his father’s time, a watch sold in London would have generally been identical to one sold in Paris. Jacques, fortunate enough to be busy with large commissions for maharajas’ necklaces and coronation tiaras, hadn’t prioritized the smaller timepieces. But Jean-Jacques faced a very different market, and, like his late uncle, he appreciated design and function being combined in one stylish object.

Just as Louis had worked closely with Edmond Jaeger, so Jean-Jacques worked with his successor firm, Jaeger-LeCoultre (the Swiss supplier of Cartier’s watch movements, considered top in their field). He loved thin watches that looked and felt as if you were hardly wearing them, and he aspired to come up with the thinnest possible. “Often the artist sets the technician difficult problems,” Devaux had written about Cartier’s watchmaking division, “compelling him to some kind of mechanical miracles that he has achieved thanks to determination, care, and admirable science.” The JJC model was one of the most popular styles in London. A reworking of the original Tank, it had more rounded edges, and in one of its many variations was one of the thinnest watches in the world.

In a smaller room off the main Wright & Davies workshop sat Albert Penny, the leather craftsman. He would make watch straps to fit the client’s wrist. Each week, the cases, deployment buckles, and straps were put into a briefcase and given to the apprentice who would jump on the 38 bus to Piccadilly Circus, then walk the ten minutes or so to Cartier. “No one would have ever guessed a scruffy boy on a bus was carrying anything valuable,” he later recalled. Entering through the staff entrance, the apprentice and his case would head upstairs to the small watchmaking division. Here, under the watchful eye of Eric Denton, goldwork and straps from Wright & Davies would be combined with dials, movements, and winders and transformed into working timepieces.

“Cartier was the only firm to produce handmade, individual eighteen-carat watches with their special buckle fastener,” one London employee of the period recalled, “even the cabochon sapphire winders were made by hand.” Given the time-consuming nature of the work, the production of watches was limited. Clients from all over the world might have to wait, often for months, for their order to be ready. For the more original designs, Jean-Jacques might insist on reducing the output to twenty, or even fewer. Part of the luxury aspect, he felt, lay in the exclusivity of the pieces. In time, some of these watches would gain almost iconic status.

Excerpt taken from The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family behind the Jewellery Empire by Francesca Cartier Brickell, © Ballantine, reproduced with kind permission from Ballantine, Penguin Random House.