Not To Be Missed: Cartier and America
Martin Chapman, curator of European decorative arts and sculpture at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, in conversation with Anthony Brazilay Freund.

INTRO:
Cartier and America, the (literally) dazzling exhibition that opened in December at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, which runs through April 18, marks the centennial of the French jewelry house’s first store opening in the United States. But more importantly, it shines a light on the evolving tastes of rich American women for fine jewelry and decorative objects made by the world’s leading purveyor of such things. Culled from Cartier’s own extensive archives (beginning in the 1970s CK, the house began buying back important pieces to create a permanent record of their remarkable design history), and from private collectors, among them Elizabeth Taylor and the family of Princess Grace of Monaco, the show’s more than 200 objects also include vintage photographs, correspondence and atelier drawings that shed light on how these veritable works of art came to be. Martin Chapman, curator of European decorative arts and sculpture at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, who organized the show and is the author of the wonderful accompanying catalog, Cartier and America, shared his insights with me on diamonds, doyennes and the enduring appeal of Cartier’s best designs .

As you were preparing this exhibition you must have spent many hours immersed in Cartier’s extensive archives?
Really one of the most exciting aspects of this project for me was the opportunity to see the archives. People were permitted to visit it up to the early 1990s but that is no longer the case. So I felt very privileged to go into the archives and found the most fascinating things there.

The archives are spread among Paris, London and New York. In which city did you find the choicest material for your exhibition?
They were all very useful but London was surprisingly so, because there was an international set living there, particularly in the 1920s and ’30s, many of whom were American. I found fascinating information about, say, Elsie de Wolfe, who seemed to pay more than anyone else for a set of 52 pearls in 1924 and Lady Cunard, who’s not very well known in America but who was a leader of London society in the ’30s, particularly around the circle of King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.

Was that Nancy Cunard?
No, she was Nancy’s mother, known as Emerald Cunard. But she was born Maud Burke in Oakland and I particularly wanted to find people with San Francisco connections. But sadly I only turned up one address, in the Paris archives, and that was of a Mrs. Neustadter, the wife of a clothing manufacturer who made work wear, rather like Levi Strauss.

And what did Mrs. Neustadter commission?
A beautiful choker in 1908 made of diamonds. It’s very classical and very grand, with wreaths and acanthus ornaments and with a necklace suspended from it. We’ve got a photograph but not the actual object.

So along with the jewels and gems, the archives contain vintage photographs?
They’re all set up differently. Paris, quite naturally, has the most extensive archives. And in Paris there are plaster casts, which they used to make up until about 1915, as records of the finest pieces of jewelry. These were hung up in the workshops to remind the workers of what an object looked like in three dimensions. We’ve got two of them in the exhibition. And they also took full-size photographs, which they’ve maintained in albums.
Looking through these suddenly confirmed to me that American women bought tiaras, certainly up to the First World War. These tiaras, which are usually associated with European aristocracy, were purchased by Americans of the Gilded Age just as frequently. In fact, almost more so.

Did you make other discoveries about American taste and buying preferences compared to Europe?
There was an interesting switchover in about 1909 or 1910, when Americans became the most important clients for Cartier, buying some of the most lavish pieces. That’s particularly played out among the Vanderbilt women, who seemed to be vying with each other to commission the most fabulous pieces of jewelry. And, surprisingly, they’re often in the Neo-Byzantine style, which really accords more with what’s going on with Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York than with Parisian taste. So what it suggests to me is that the Americans are running the agenda, or at least a part of it.

You’ve mentioned that only one of these Vanderbilt commissions survives today. What is it?
It’s a pendant from Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III’s necklace. We have a photograph in the show from around 1909 of her wearing it along with the rest of her jewelry: a tiara commissioned the same year and a diamond-set rose bought from Cartier in 1904, which had belonged to Princess Mathilde, the niece of Napoleon. She’s pretty lavishly decked out in jewelry. And we also have a Cecil Beaton photograph from 1939 of her in her famous Fifth Avenue mansion wearing exactly the same suite of jewelry and looking, I’m afraid, a bit like a deflated balloon.

You write in the catalog about a scandal surrounding Grace Vanderbilt.
Yes, the family had disinherited her husband for marrying her. So there’s a lot of social history wrapped up with this subject.

What was her crime?
She was considered spoiled goods. She’d been previously engaged to John Jacob Astor and in the culture of the day that meant a woman didn’t get a second chance at marriage. So they regarded her as an adventuress, apparently, although she came from a perfectly respectable family in the South. Whereas by contrast, Cornelius’s cousin William K. Vanderbilt II married Virginia Graham Fair, known as Birdie Vanderbilt, about the same time. She came from San Francisco — she built the Fairmont Hotel — and she was the daughter of Senator James Fair, who had made his money in the Comstock Lode and who had been a poor Irish immigrant. So if you were going to object to anyone on a class basis you’d think they’d have objected to her, not Grace. But no, I think the money won out there.

So poor Cornelius III was completely cut off. How’d he pay his Cartier bills?
His father left a fortune of $73 million from which his brother generously gave him $6 million. And then an uncle died in about 1909 and left him the big Fifth Avenue mansion, which I think is why she was photographed then. Incidentally, she rose to become the matriarch of the family, which just goes to show that family disapproval doesn’t necessarily win out. Although, of course, it was the end for the Duchess of Windsor.

But your show proves that the former Wallis Simpson still did well by Cartier despite her new family’s disapproval.
I think that she probably did better out of her jewelry as a result of the family disapproval. There was another competition going on and she was going to show the British Royal Family and the world that she could commission better jewelry than anyone else.

Do you think she succeeded?
She had marvelous things. Absolutely amazing. I would say that of all the women in the show the Duchess of Windsor is the most interesting collector, in terms of avant-garde jewelry. But for sheer splendor, Mrs. Post’s jewelry is the best.

Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, in Washington, D.C., which was once the home of Marjorie Merriweather Post, has loaned several pieces to the exhibition.
They’ve been immensely generous to this show and I’m so grateful because Mrs. Post far outshines any other American who lived in the United States. She’s a fascinating character beyond her jewelry, too: She was the first woman to be put on a corporate board, so she’s recognized as a businesswoman in her own right and she really does have a very good financial sense, to the extent that when she was negotiating with the Nixon administration to give her Palm Beach mansion, Mar a Lago, to the nation, she was asked by one of the bureaucrats how much it cost to run a year. Without hesitation, she passed him a written figure of $428,756.17.

She stands in stark contrast to Barbara Hutton…
…who was her niece by marriage. She was concerned about Barbara going off the rails and being known as the Poor Little Rich Girl. By contrast, Mrs. Post always seemed to manage the press and her image extremely well. As one of her most famous gestures at the height of the Depression, she retired her jewelry into a bank vault and, it is said, with the money she saved on the insurance – because the insurance is enormous for wearing these things – she opened a soup kitchen.

That’s a gesture you wouldn’t have seen from Hutton.
But I have to say in Barbara Hutton’s favor, she was an amazingly canny chooser of diamonds and jewelry. We have the most beautiful jade ring, which she bought in Paris in 1934 and which is thought by some people to be the most beautiful piece of jade in existence.

So often in the decorative arts you’ll see a lag time between what is fashionable in Europe and what becomes fashionable in America. Was that the case with Cartier styles?
I don’t think so. Transatlantic routes and Cartier’s alliance with fashion meant that the jewelry had to be absolutely up to the minute. Diana Vreeland would talk about moving back to New York from London in 1938 and how she brought some Blackamoor dress clips with her. She says she recommended to Cartier New York that they import them and that there was a battle among Cartier’s clients of who could get them across the Atlantic first.

You write in the catalog, too, about the strong connection between Cartier and the world of fashion.
Yes, in 1900 there were two marriages between the Cartier family and the Worth family, who had the shop next door on the Rue de la Paix and were considered the greatest couturiers in Europe. This undoubtedly encouraged business between the two. Then at the Great Exhibition in Paris in 1925, Cartier chose to show with the couturiers rather than with the jewelers. And in the 1930s you can see Cartier being promoted in the pages of fashion magazines.

Were they the only jewelers of the time promoting themselves in this way?
I think they were leading they way. But — and there is definitely a but to this — why did they not embrace international Modernism in the 1930s as other avant-garde jewelers were doing? And why didn’t they make more hard-edged pieces that intersected with the fashions of the time? I think the answers may come down to their clients. The more uncompromising aspects of Modernism were not embraced by the very rich.

Are there some examples of rare Modern, or Moderne, pieces in the exhibition?
I would argue that Gloria Swanson’s pair of bracelets are Moderne. They are made out of diamonds and semi-circular pieces of rock crystal strung on elastic to create big cuffs. She bought them in 1930, when she was known as the Marquise de la Falaise, and she wore them 20 years later in the movie Sunset Boulevard(ITALS). This shows that movie stars wore their own jewelry in films.

Are there other movie stars in the exhibition?
Well, of course there’s Grace Kelly, who wears her engagement ring in High Society(ITALS), her last film, and makes a feature of it, rather charmingly polishing it up on a blue-silk cushion in an impatient way while she’s waiting for somebody.

Did anyone in the Monaco Royal Family disapprove of her using the ring as a prop?
Not that I know of. The only story I’ve heard is that when the Kelly family saw the ring Rainier was giving her, they said, “No, you can do better.” I think the original was an absolutely classic engagement ring with two small rubies surrounding a small diamond. Engagement rings in Europe are not the sort of cocktail rings they are in America.

And did Prince Rainier go back to the drawing board — or, I should say, the Cartier shop?
Yes, he came up with this beautiful 10.7-carat diamond ring, which is emerald cut. That’s the most difficult cut to perform and the highest quality diamonds are required for it.

It’s quite a coup for you to be able to display that ring in San Francisco, on loan from Prince Albert.
It’s been shown publicly before but never in America, and I think it’s the Americans who regard her in a position close to a saint. Her Cartier jewelry is simple and restrained and acts as the perfect foil to her classic and refined beauty.

Tell me about the photograph of Kelly in the show.
It’s an official portrait from 1959 and she’s wearing her Order of the House of Monaco, which includes a necklace we’ve got in the show and her engagement ring.

Is the entire suite by Cartier?
I don’t know about the bracelet, but the tiara is. It’s comprised of three brooches that were a gift from the Societe des Bains de Mer, which is the casino in Monte Carlo.

They seem to have spared no expense — and could well afford not to. Which leads me to Elizabeth Taylor, who has seen a lot of extravagant jewelry in her day, much of it from Cartier.
She generously loaned us several objects. And we have a home movie showing her wearing some of these pieces. It was taken in 1957 in a pool at a villa at Cap Ferrat. She’s in a bathing costume and she tries on the ruby-and-diamond earrings and necklace, a gift from her then-husband Mike Todd, and you’ve never seen such pleasure.

I agree. If you want to sum up in one image what jewelry can mean to a woman just look at her face. The eyes, the smile: she’s in ecstasy.
She’s completely bowled over by this suite, which had been made in 1951.

The show includes pieces dating all the way back to 1902. What would you characterize as Cartier’s Golden Age?
I’d say it’s between 1920 and 1939, and particularly the Art Deco pieces. But I have to add that Cartier’s jewelry from 1900 to 1910 also represents a great moment, because those classic pieces — done in what they call the Garland Style, inspired by 18th-century platinum and white diamond jewelry — is also amazing for its refinement and elegance and conservative good taste. That was the taste of the courts of Europe, which influenced the tastes of Cartier’s American patrons.

Does one royal patron stand out in your mind?
Queen Alexandra was the model for all this. She was the Queen of England, married to Victoria’s son Edward VII and the most beautiful member of the European royal families, and we have a photo in the show in which she is wearing a Cartier collier razil, which is part choker, part necklace. In the catalog, I quote Cornelius Vanderbilt III, who characterized her “as possessing the world’s most beautiful shoulders and bosom for displaying jewels.”
So she was regarded as the role model. It’s for women like her that a whole new type of jewelry is conceived. Cartier did a vast reworking of their business around 1899. And they really ratcheted up from being a middle-class retailer to being the jeweler to the elites of the world: the Russians, the Americans, the Brits, as well as the French. And it was through the business captured by Cartier of Queen Alexandra’s husband, Edward VII, who was a luxury-loving bon-vivant and a Francophile, that the jeweler really got the business of the courts of Europe and was therefore able to use this as a marketing tool to the Gilded Age generation in America.