The Story of a Jewelry House and the Family That Built It

Nov 18, 2019, 5:02 a.m ETANTIBES, France - The story of the Cartier Crash watch is a good one: The timepiece, Dalí-esque in form, is said to have been inspired by a Cartier Maxi Oval that was all but destroyed in a 1960s car crash fireball involving a VIP.

client - or a Cartier director, depending on who is talking Ms Cartier Brickell, 41, is a granddaughter of that final executive, Jean-Jacques Cartier, who ran Cartier London until the sale.

Cartier owned the gem briefly, not long after Pierre Cartier opened the house's New York office in 1909 - and, as the book describes, it turned out to play a significant role in Cartier's success in the United States "Soon after Cartier moved to New York, the brothers decided they had to buy large stones," Ms Cartier Brickell said.

In an amusing side note, Ms Cartier Brickell said that a letter from a New York employee to Jacques Cartier in London described the flurry when the New York staff arrived with jewels and found out the builders still had the keys to the refurbished mansion Ms.

Cartier Brickell said her grandfather never spoke to the news media about the origins of the asymmetrical design, introduced in 1967.But before his death in 2010, he told her that he and Rupert Emmerson, his longtime design partner, had concocted the watch's amorphous form themselves - "Just like that." Ms Cartier Brickell said that, for her, "The Cartiers" was "a labor of love." . Source