Cartier, V&A: A spellbinding, once-in-a-lifetime display of old-world glamour

The Maison Cartier was founded in Paris in 1847, just five years before the Victoria and Albert Museum opened its doors. Nearly two centuries later, the South Kensington jewel box has been transformed into a spellbinding venue for this once-in-a-lifetime retrospective of the House that has become synonymous with unfathomable fortunes and old-world glamour.

The exhibition deftly draws the viewer into the spheres of cultural influence that inspired three brothers, Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier, to “fulfill their dream and take their House to all four corners of the globe”. Through sheer ambition and imaginative vision, the siblings catapulted their grandfather’s family business into a world-class establishment patronised by royals, film stars and bankers’ wives.

Cartier’s early designs took inspiration from the decorative arts of 18th-century France: festoons, ribbons, tassels and wreathes. The Lily stomacher brooch from 1906 is a beautiful example of the Garland Style’s neoclassical inspiration. But the brothers did not limit their visions to the stylistic realms of Louis XVI. With the gluttony of connoisseurs, they voraciously assimilated cultural motifs and iconographies from far beyond the confines of their fatherland; panthers and lobed cartouches from Indo-Persian carpets, Chinese dragons with cabochon emerald eyes and jade medallions carved in imitation of coins from the reign of Emperor Guangxu.

The House of Cartier has thrived on elevating the whims of popular taste to an art form. In the midst of the Egyptomania that sprung from the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, it launched a series of ancient Egypt-themed creations. They rolled out scarab belts, Sekhmet broaches, and even an Art Deco mantelpiece clock engraved with hieroglyphs that were in the Egyptian style but not “linguistically or historically accurate”.

Of particular note is a 1925 vanity case in the shape of an Egyptian sarcophagus. Every surface of this miniature tomb is decorated: two carved emerald sphinxes enrobed and encrusted with onyx and diamonds perch on either end; an intricate lotus frieze runs along its length above which rests a lid of carved bone bearing a relief of a lady and lotus. On the base, a gold plaque depicting a female figure and heron.