Cartier

Cartier’s Mystery Clocks are among the most awe-inspiring creations in luxury horology, celebrated for their innovative design and exquisite artistry. Reflecting the luxurious materials and bold geometric style central to the Art Deco movement, these clocks were crafted with an opulent palette that included rock crystal, platinum, gold, turquoise, precious stones, coral, and enamel, transforming functional timepieces into lavish works of art. Their elegant forms, combined with the illusion of seemingly floating hands, became symbols of modern sophistication, captivating all who encountered them and helping to solidify Cartier’s reputation as a leader in horological excellence. 

Embodying the wealth, glamour, and innovation of the interwar years, these clocks were influenced by rapid advances in technology and a fascination with Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic art. This cross-cultural inspiration allowed Cartier’s designers to explore a fresh visual language, incorporating intricate patterns, forms, and motifs that reflected both exoticism and luxury within a bold, modern framework.

With hands that appear to turn magically in mid-air without any visible driving force, Mystery Clocks, such as the magnificent example shown here, continue to astound onlookers even today. To achieve this ‘floating’ effect, each hand is attached to a separate transparent crystal disc, cleverly engineered with toothed borders that interact with hidden worm screws within the clock’s frame. These worm screws, powered by an 8-day movement concealed within the clock’s base, turn the discs independently and at the correct speed to display minutes and hours. The first Mystery Clock was sold by Cartier in 1912, just one year after Maurice Coüet (1885-1963) began his partnership with Cartier. When Louis Cartier set up his specialist clock department, it was his mission to design and present clocks of outstanding elegance, beauty and innovation that would set Cartier apart from its competitors. In Coüet, he found the perfect collaborator, a man of exceptional talent and imagination, Coüet came from a distinguished family of horologists (his father had regulated table clocks for Breguet). Coüet’s Mystery Clocks closely followed designs by Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–1871), a renowned French illusionist and clockmaker, whose own Mystery Clocks used hands mounted on glass discs that ‘floated’ in mid-air. The similarity in mechanism and design suggests that Coüet may have directly studied Robert-Houdin’s clocks. To preserve their mystique, Cartier’s sales staff at the Rue de la Paix store were not permitted to know the secrets behind their operation. 

Although the whereabouts of the first Cartier Mystery Clock are unknown, it is believed to have been a Model-A type, characterized by an exquisitely decorated skeletonized framework supporting a chapter ring encased in a rectangular rock crystal structure, with its movement hidden in a hardstone base. In 1920, Coüet began producing a new single-axle Mystery Clock style, where the discs with hands were connected to a central axle driven by a movement in the base—truly magnificent in design and execution, the present clock is an early example of this type. Extraordinarily complex to produce, these timepieces required the involvement of artisans from various disciplines, including enamellers, lapidaries, gemsetters, engravers, polishers, and clockmakers. Nadelhoffer notes in Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary that Mystery Clocks could take the Cartier workshops as much as twelve months to create (see op. cit. p. 251) and refers to 19 variants of the single-axle Mystery Clocks produced up to 1931. 

The accompanying Cartier certificate notes that this clock was supplied to Cartier London in 1921 and the base carries the London stock number · 4375 ·. Interestingly a very similarly decorated and sized mystery clock to the present piece, was supplied to Cartier New York in the same year (1921) and is illustrated in The Cartier Collection: Timepieces by F. Chaille and F. Cologni (Paris: Flammarion, 2006, pp. 200-201).