Cartier
In all the years that I have lived in NYC, I have never walked into the Cartier store on 52nd and 5th Avenue.
No need to really. Although, now that I have walked through the door and ogled over their wares, it is worth the journey. Just beautiful pieces particularly the vintage goodies.
Today I walked through to see the exhibit on the 2nd floor which called 100 Years of Cartier in America. It is fantastic. Each room is a period of time. The beginning shows pictures of the tiny black van that would make deliveries to peoples home with their purchases. Pieces borrowed and still owned by Cartier on display. They have been buying back their old pieces over the years to keep. What was interesting is how I could actually tell what time period a piece had been made based on the design.
There was one diamond shown that was 231 carats. A total show stopper. But there are also clocks. One particular clock was given to FDR from Cartier during WWII. It has four different clocks around the main clock. Those four show different time zones of where we were present. It also represents a place in time that was going to change. For instance, one of the clocks is Paris and the other is London time. At that point, they were on the same time zone. The historical pieces were all interesting even the Apollo formed at a gift to Neil Armstrong.
One of my favorite rooms was the diamonds from Elizabeth Taylor. On the wall of each room there were different quotes from different people. In this particular room it had the quote from the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger from Some Girls. "French girls, they want Cartier. Italian girls they want cars. American girls they want everything in the world they can possibly imagine.". I think they got that right on.
Unfortunately, no pics allowed.
Comments (Archived):
I am jealous. Out Boston Cartier is nothing. I haven’t been into the New York store in 10 yrs, but at that time, there was an exceptional exhibit as well. There were pearls the size of eggs and diamond and emerald briolettes the size of your fist. They were knockout pieces. The early Cartier pieces were magnificent. My girlfriend collects art deco platinum bracelets and cartier made some wonderful ones.By any chance did you notice a carved emerald brooch surrounded by diamonds and rubies? I saw a certain piece at auction with a low estimate but knew it would go over 200,000 easily. I always wondered if Cartier bought it back. The emerald came from an Indian Mogul Prince and Cartier bought it in 1900 and reset it into a brooch. Originally it was a turban jewel. That was one of the nicest clearest emeralds that I had ever seen.
I only went through a small portion of the tour but they said that Cartieris buying back many of the original pieces for a vault that is temperaturecontrolled in France. There was an incredible emerald brooch that was longand heavy. It was spectacular.Ellen, I get a feeling that you have quite a jewelry collection yourself.
That could have been it?
It dangled and was about 6 inches in length.