The Cartier Mughal style is a distinctive jewellery vocabulary developed by Cartier from the 1910s through the 1930s, drawing on the firm's direct engagement with Indian princely patrons, Indian gemstone traditions, and the Mughal carved-emerald-ruby-and-sapphire aesthetic that the Cartier brothers encountered in their travels and commissions. The style culminated in the Tutti Frutti pieces of the late 1920s and 1930s — necklaces, brooches, and bracelets combining carved emeralds, rubies, and sapphires in dense polychromatic compositions reminiscent of Mughal court jewels — and remains one of the most identifiable Cartier signatures, periodically revived in the firm's contemporary collections.

Jacques Cartier's 1911 visit to India

The Mughal-influenced direction of Cartier's design programme began with the 1911 journey of Jacques Cartier, the youngest of the three Cartier brothers and head of the London branch, to India. The visit was undertaken in connection with the Delhi Durbar of 1911, the imperial ceremony at which George V was proclaimed Emperor of India, and gave Jacques direct access to the Indian princely courts. Over several weeks of travel and meetings, he negotiated commissions, acquired stones, and observed the design vocabulary of the Indian jewellery tradition at first hand.

The encounter was decisive. Jacques returned to Europe with substantial purchases of Mughal-period and contemporary Indian carved stones — emeralds, rubies, and sapphires carved with floral motifs in the Mughal lapidary tradition — and with a network of relationships with Indian princely clients that supported continuing commissions through the following decades. The carved stones became the raw material for the firm's Indian-inflected designs, with Cartier setting Mughal-period stones into European-format mountings that combined Indian colour and stone-carving traditions with Cartier's own design discipline.

Indian princely commissions

Through the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, Cartier executed major commissions for Indian princely clients, including the Maharajas of Patiala, Kapurthala, Indore, Nawanagar, and others. The Patiala commissions in particular, undertaken for Maharaja Bhupinder Singh and his successor Yadavindra Singh, included some of the largest single jewellery commissions of the period — most famously the Patiala Necklace, a five-row diamond and platinum necklace incorporating the De Beers Yellow Diamond and weighing approximately 1,000 carats in total stone weight, completed in 1928.

The princely commissions worked in two directions stylistically. Some pieces remained in fully European Cartier vocabulary, with the Indian client as patron rather than as cultural influence. Others adopted Indian design elements — carved emeralds in floral patterns, the layered necklace structure of Indian court jewellery, the use of articulated mountings allowing motion on the body — and brought them into Cartier's catalogue.

Tutti Frutti

The Tutti Frutti style, named retrospectively from Italian for all the fruits, is the most identifiable expression of the Cartier Mughal direction. Tutti Frutti pieces — developed principally by the design directors Charles Jacqueau and later Jeanne Toussaint — combine carved emeralds, rubies, and sapphires in dense, vegetal, polychromatic compositions, set in platinum mountings often with diamond pavé accents. The carved stones, frequently of Indian Mughal-period origin or Indian early-twentieth-century manufacture, are the visual centre of each piece.

The style developed from approximately 1925 and reached its mature expression in the late 1920s and 1930s. Notable Tutti Frutti pieces include the Hindu Necklace made for Daisy Fellowes in 1936, the Eddie Cantor Bracelet, and various pieces commissioned by the Duchess of Windsor. The Hindu Necklace was sold at auction by Sotheby's in 1991 and again in 2010, with Cartier reacquiring the piece for its heritage collection.

The vocabulary

The Cartier Mughal style draws on several Indian tradition elements. Carved emeralds with floral or scroll patterns, often Mughal-period work, are central. Cabochon rubies and emeralds in the Indian fashion, rather than European-faceted stones, are characteristic. Articulated platinum mountings permit motion on the body in the Indian princely tradition. Polychromatic combinations of multiple colour groups in single pieces, departing from the European preference for single-colour or two-colour palettes, distinguish Mughal-style pieces from contemporary Parisian convention.

The style is not a copy of Indian jewellery but a Cartier interpretation, with the firm's design discipline and Parisian craft applied to the Indian colour and stone-carving traditions. The result is recognisably both Cartier and Mughal-influenced, representing an early-twentieth-century moment of confident cultural exchange in high jewellery.

Continuing influence

The Cartier Mughal style has been periodically revived in the firm's contemporary collections, with Tutti Frutti reissues and Mughal-influenced pieces appearing in successive decades. The style's continuing presence in Cartier's catalogue reflects both the design's enduring appeal and the firm's strategic use of its archival heritage as a contemporary marketing asset.

In the trade

Original Cartier Mughal-style pieces from the 1920s and 1930s are highly collected, with major Tutti Frutti and related pieces commanding multi-million-dollar prices at auction when documentation supports the attribution. Cartier's heritage collection includes a substantial number of period pieces, with periodic exhibition and re-acquisition activity. For collectors, the combination of Cartier provenance, Indian carved stones of Mughal-period origin, and the documented history of the original commission supports the highest tier of jewellery-collection value.

Further reading

• Cartier — Tutti Frutti and heritage collections