Cartier at Bukowskis
A magnificent collection of Cartier jewellery will be sold at Bukowskis’ auction Important Winter Sale on Friday 11 December. It is an extraordinary collection of jewels, five of which can also be used to measure time. Everything is in yellow gold except one watch in rose gold, the Ballon Bleu model, a model that first appeared in 2007. All the other pieces of jewellery and watches were bought during the years 1990 to 1995, which you can see if you look at the stamps in the certificates that come with practically all of the items. The place of purchase is Cartier’s shop on Banhofstrasse in Zürich.
Text: Britta Rossander
A magnificent collection of Cartier jewellery will be sold at Bukowskis’ auction Important Winter Sale on Friday the 11th of December. It is a peerless collection of jewels where five of them can also be used to measure time. Everything is in yellow gold except one watch which is in rose gold, model Ballon Bleu, a model that did not arrive until 2007. All the other pieces of jewellery and the watches were bought during the years 1990 – 1995 which you can see if you look at the stamps in the certificates that come with basicaly all of the items. The place of purchase is Cartier’s shop on Banhofstrasse in Zürich.
This is the largest collection of Cartier jewels that has ever been up for sale at an auction in the Nordics. It is extremely unusual that we get to see such a high class collection here in northern Europe.
A piece of jewellery!
That Cartier’s interpretation of the panther has been one of the favourites escapes no one when you go through the estimates. The graceful animal in gold is most often decorated with tsavorites for the eyes and onyx for the spots in the fur. A combination which in Cartier’s design goes back to when the Art Deco style (1908 – 1935) reached its absolute peak.
Jeanne Touissant, at the time head of Cartier’s jewellery department, is said to have shouted ”A piece of jewellery”, when in 1914 together with Louis Cartier on safari in Africa she saw the beautiful, lithe animal. Jeanne Touissant who got the nickname petite panthère was creative director at Cartier right up into the 1970s. And panther jewellery has been worn by a whole row of iconic style setters – from Duchess of Windsor to Jay-Z.
Egyptomania
The scarab too, a little beetle which in ancient Egyptian mythology represented the sun god Ra, came into Cartier collections in the 1920s. When the British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamon’s tomb in 1922 the Cartier brothers were struck, just like many others, by ”Egyptomania”. A collecting mania was in full swing and the brothers built up a collection of art objects from ancient Egypt. A good hundred of these in small size, among them scarabs, they had set into jewellery which today, if they turn up at auction at all, is traded for enormous fantasy sums.
The auction’s magnificent scarab suite consists of necklace, bracelet, earrings and a specially ordered ring and has a combined estimate of 975 000 – 1 150 000 kronor. All the parts are of course sold separately but it would be lovely if some customer could buy the whole set including the ring because that after all is how it is meant to be worn – together.
Gold
All the jewels and watches are made in yellow gold except one watch which has the pink tone of gold. Diamonds sit on all the jewels in masses except on the large ring model ”Panthère”, the earrings in the same series and the bracelet, there it is enamel, onyx, peridot and emerald that it has been decorated with in classic Cartier manner.
The auction takes place on Friday and can be followed via a link. Do it! Because a collection like this we will probably not get to see sold in Sweden again. The jewels go under the hammer starting at 16 00.
