O ur October Weekly Edit Fine Jewels celebrates The Cartier Object with a conference held on October 7th, and with the sale of vanity cases, cigarettes cases and a desk clock signed by the iconic jeweller.
The sale features a fine selection of pieces signed by Van Cleef & Arpels, Harry Winston, Suzanne Belperron, Bulgari, Boucheron, Cartier and Mauboussin. In addition, we will offer important coloured stones such as a Kashmir sapphire, Burmese rubies, colourless and Fancy colour diamonds.
The history of the Maison Cartier is obviously linked to the creation of jewellery and watches. Nevertheless, it can also be discovered through more functional objects.
Louis Cartier, in particular, used his imagination to create these useful and decorative - yet elegant and precious - objects.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the creation of these objects was a response to the demand of a diversified clientele, adapting their ways of life to a more bourgeois and industrial society. However, what made these Cartier objects different from your ‘everyday’ objects, was the fact that the codes of High jewellery were applied to these luxury objects: use of precious materials, high quality finishing, and constantly renewed creativity.
The distinctive hue of coloured diamonds is caused by impurities or structural defects within the chemical composition of the stones. In the case of blue diamonds, the colour is due to boron trapped in the crystal's structure, and few to no nitrogen impurities for Type IIb diamond classification. In the case of yellow diamonds, nitrogen impurities give them their yellow tint.
As the colour saturation increases in a diamond, so does its value. The colour grading scale is the same for all fancy colour diamonds: Fancy Light, Fancy, Fancy Dark, Fancy Intense, and Fancy Vivid.
Ostertag was founded in the 1920’s by Swiss-born Arnold Ostertag, who opened his jewelry house in Place Vendôme in 1922, as well as in Cannes, Le Touquet and New York. At the time his creations equaled those of the great houses of Place Vendôme, and his jewelry was highly sought after by both a French and American clientele. Strongly inspired by India, he often used engraved or ribbed colored gemstones in his pieces. Ostertag was well versed in the codes of the decorative arts, which he also applied in the creation of various exquisite objects: clocks, bags, powder compacts, cigarette cases. Ostertag participated in the 1929 Musée Galliera exhibition “Les Arts de la Bijouterie, Joaillerie et Orfèvrerie » in Paris, where our diamond brooch was exhibited.
In 1939 he moved to the United States, where he died in 1940. His Maison formally closed the following year, when Paris was occupied during World War Two. Despite the brief existence, Arnold Ostertag and his Maison contributed significantly to French Jewelry, making Ostertag's jewels renowned and highly collectible to this day.
