Pierre Cartier
Pierre Cartier
The youngest of the three Cartier brothers, who built Cartier New York and brokered the Hope Diamond
Pierre Cartier (1878–1964) was the youngest of the three Cartier brothers — Louis, Jacques, and Pierre — who divided the world between them in the early decades of the twentieth century and built the firm into the global luxury name it remains. To Louis went Paris, where he served as the creative driver of the house and presided over the Place Vendôme operation. To Jacques went London, the British Empire, and the buying networks of India and the Persian Gulf. To Pierre went New York and the Americas, where he established Cartier's Fifth Avenue presence in 1909 and made the firm one of the principal commercial actors in the American luxury market for the next half-century.
Family and early career
Pierre was born in Paris in 1878, the third son of Alfred Cartier, who had taken over the family business from his father Louis-François Cartier (the founder, who had established the firm in Paris in 1847). The three brothers worked together at the rue de la Paix house through the 1890s and early 1900s, before the elder Alfred and his sons resolved on a strategy of geographic specialisation that would distribute the family across the principal markets of the new century. Pierre was the brother dispatched to America, with the assignment of building a presence comparable to what Louis was building in Paris and Jacques in London.
Establishment of Cartier New York
The New York branch opened in 1909 in initial premises on Fifth Avenue, growing rapidly through the years either side of the First World War as American industrial fortunes flowed into the luxury market. In 1917 Pierre Cartier acquired the firm's permanent New York address: the Italian Renaissance-style townhouse at 653 Fifth Avenue, traded for a two-strand natural-pearl necklace valued at one million dollars. The transaction has become one of the celebrated stories of twentieth-century jewellery history — a building exchanged for a string of pearls — and the building remains the New York flagship today, more than a century later. The pearl necklace itself was assembled and matched over years from the firm's stock; the seller of the building was Maud Plant, the wife of railway magnate Morton Plant, who wanted the pearls more than the property.
The Hope Diamond
Pierre Cartier brokered the most famous diamond transaction of his career in 1911: the sale of the Hope Diamond, the 45.52-carat fancy deep grayish-blue diamond, to the American heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean. The stone had been acquired by Cartier the previous year from the estate of Sultan Abdul Hamid II's adviser, and Pierre's marketing of the stone to Mrs McLean — playing carefully on the legend of the diamond's curse, which served the romantic narrative of the sale — became a textbook case of high-end jewellery salesmanship. Mrs McLean wore the stone for the rest of her life, and it now resides at the Smithsonian Institution, donated by the diamond merchant Harry Winston after he acquired it from the McLean estate in 1949.
American clientele
Through the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, Pierre Cartier built the New York clientele that the firm's commercial reputation rested on. The roster ran across American old-wealth families — Vanderbilt, Astor, Mellon — through industrial fortunes — Ford, Du Pont, Rockefeller — and into the entertainment and political figures who came to define American luxury consumption: Hollywood stars, financial titans, and visiting royalty. Pierre's understanding of American taste and his comfort with American business practices were instrumental; the Place Vendôme house could supply the design and craftsmanship, but selling at the scale Cartier achieved in America required someone who understood the buyer.
Mid-century
Pierre Cartier remained at the head of the New York operation through the Second World War, when the New York house effectively replaced Paris as the firm's commercial centre during the German occupation, and into the post-war years. He turned over operational direction in the 1950s as the next generation took on management responsibility, and he retired in 1964, dying the same year. The firm passed through a complex period of family succession and eventual external ownership in the 1960s and 1970s, with the three regional houses re-unified under Cartier International in 1972, but the New York presence Pierre had built remained one of the firm's principal anchors throughout the transition.
Legacy
Pierre Cartier is remembered principally for the institution-building work that made Cartier a genuinely transatlantic firm rather than a French jeweller with an American outpost. The 653 Fifth Avenue building is still the New York flagship; the American clientele Pierre established is still part of the firm's identity; and the Hope Diamond transaction remains one of the iconic moments in the history of the diamond trade. Period Cartier New York pieces from his era — Art Deco, Tutti Frutti, the great Indian-inspired commissions of the 1920s — trade at the very top of the auction market for twentieth-century jewellery.
In the trade
Pierre Cartier-period New York signed pieces are sought after in the auction and dealer trade, with the strongest pieces — important Art Deco bracelets, Tutti Frutti necklaces, signed Indian-inspired commissions — trading at multi-million-dollar prices at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips. Provenance documentation back to the New York house ledgers, where it survives, materially affects price. Mid-century Cartier New York pieces from the late Pierre era are also strong, particularly signed work with original certificates and period boxes.