Jacques Cartier (1884-1941) was the youngest of the three grandsons of Louis-François Cartier and, with his elder brothers Louis and Pierre, a member of the second generation that transformed the Cartier firm from a Parisian goldsmith into a globally recognised house. Jacques opened the London branch in 1902 and, from a series of long buying trips through India, the Persian Gulf and Ceylon between 1911 and 1939, established the Cartier presence in the Indian princely market and reshaped the supply of fine coloured stones to the European trade.

Early career and London

The three brothers divided the firm between them: Louis took the original Paris house at 13 rue de la Paix, Pierre took New York, and Jacques took London. The London branch opened at 4 New Burlington Street in 1902, moving in 1909 to 175 Bond Street and finally in 1924 to its long-term flagship at 175-176 New Bond Street. Jacques served as principal of the London house for the rest of his life, building the British royal and aristocratic clientele and overseeing the major commissions for the Indian princely state visits.

The Indian and Persian Gulf years

Jacques's most distinctive contribution was as the firm's principal travelling buyer in the East. From his first visit to India in 1911 (timed to coincide with the Delhi Durbar of George V) through subsequent trips in 1913, 1923, 1935 and 1939, he established direct buying relationships with the Maharajas of Patiala, Kapurthala, Indore, Nawanagar, Baroda and Hyderabad, and through Bombay and Calcutta dealers with the wider Indian market for emerald, ruby, sapphire and the carved Mughal-period gem material. The Patiala Necklace commission of 1928, the Maharaja of Nawanagar's coloured-diamond rivière, the Maharani of Indore's emerald and pearl ropes, and the Hyderabad emeralds passed through the Cartier London workshops under his supervision.

The Persian Gulf trips, which preceded the Indian visits and continued in parallel, established a direct Cartier presence in the Bahrain pearl market at the height of the natural-pearl trade and in the Basra and Bombay onward shipping channels. The result was a steady flow of natural pearls and Asian coloured stones into the London workshops at a time when most of the European trade was still working through middlemen in Paris and London.

Tutti Frutti and the Indian style

The carved-emerald, ruby and sapphire compositions that Cartier developed under Jacques's influence and that are now generally known as the Tutti Frutti style (a Christie's catalogue term that has stuck) drew directly on the carved Mughal-period gem material he brought back from India. The style, formalised in the late 1920s, has remained one of the firm's most-recognised signatures.

Position in the firm and legacy

Jacques continued to manage the London house through the 1930s and into the early years of the Second World War, dying in 1941. The London branch was inherited by his son Jean-Jacques Cartier, who managed it through the post-war period until the family interests in the various Cartier branches were progressively sold to outside investors in the late 1960s and 1970s, eventually consolidating into the present-day Richemont-owned Cartier in 1972-1979. The Cartier London archive, much of it relating to Jacques's tenure, is now held within the Cartier Collection at Geneva.