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Cartier's American Century
After trading a pearl necklace for a town house, Cartier USA was off and running.
Red-carpet photos, Weber says, do not represent what I felt Cartier was really about.
Would you barter the very roof over your head for the bauble of your dreams? One Mrs. Morton Plant did exactly that in an exchange now deeply embedded in the lore of Cartier's presence in the United States. That shared history dates back 100 years a centennial the jeweler is celebrating through the end of 2009 with various festivities, including the publication of an exuberant tome edited by Bruce Weber. Cartier I Love You is a stream-of-consciousness compilation of photos, anecdotes, historical tidbits and musings that relate to Cartier. There's the obvious a filmstrip series of a gleeful Elizabeth Taylor romping on the French Riviera with Mike Todd as he presents her with a dazzling suite of rubies. And the less so the shirtsleeved Joseph P. Kennedy in his wheelchair, surrounded by his 24 grandchildren, nary a carat in sight (though he supposedly bought quite a few in his day). As for that unusual housing transaction, Cartier opened in the U.S. in 1909 at 712 Fifth Avenue in New York. There, Maisie Plant, the wife of a shipping scion, often admired a stunning two-strand pearl necklace worth $1 million that she insisted she could not afford. That is, until Pierre Cartier offered the exchange, throwing in $100 to close the deal. In 1917 Cartier took possession of the Plant mansion at 653 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 52nd Street, where the jeweler has been ever since.
We say, Cartier, Paris, London and New York, says Pierre Rainero, Cartier International's style and heritage director. All three locations are very important to our soul. So, too, was producing a book that would properly capture its essence: Bruce has that talent as a photographer to be very modern and to show at the same time permanent feelings, so that's one point. Second, Bruce is very much into American culture, and he knows how to express it in a very good way. I knew that he would understand what we were...