Nothing is gendered anymore, for the sake of good design: Cartier Libre

Marie-Laure Cérède, Creative Director of Jewelry & Watchmaking and Pierre Rainero, Director of Heritage, Image and converse with Carlo Mazzoni, Editor in Chief, for Lampoon Issue 27

The Cartier Libre Collection

Marie-Laure Cérède
The creative team at Cartier is humble; we are not on the spot. We are serving beauty and we have to be humble and have doubts.

Pierre Rainero
The Cartier Libre collection is like a permanent lab. It’s what we call fine jewelry. This is a European way of defining it, because fine jewelry in America stands for high jewelry, which is a translation from the French Haute Joaillerie. Many Anglo-Saxon people don’t understand high jewelry and we still talk about fine jewelry, but the fine is not only composed of unique pieces. There can be pieces that are repeated.

Marie-Laure Cérède
It’s a more demanding creative challenge because you have to repeat them. There’s a development dimension.

Pierre Rainero
When you’re doing a unique piece, it’s a matter of craftsmanship and artisans, but when you have to repeat it, you need to arrange solutions.

Marie-Laure Cérède
A repetition is not fully handmade. At the beginning of the creation, we have to conceive the repetition. Design elements are molded, we mold one and we can repeat it. We stay close to the technical team. Each time it’s both a creative and a technical challenge.

No gender jewelry

Carlo Mazzoni
Can your inspiration come from a technical challenge?

Marie-Laure Cérède
No. Our inspiration comes from beauty. The beads can be part of a mechanical universe, but they can also be evocative of fruits, an organic thing. We explore that ambiguity between geometry and, let’s say, a living natural. We start with a drawing by hand. As soon as we get the right intention, we start to think about the repetition, that means, about the technical challenge – but such a challenge must not come too early.

Carlo Mazzoni
Has it ever happened that the technical team came to you and said we can do this and from that you derived the idea?

Marie-Laure Cérède
It happens more often that they say No we cannot do that. Then we speak, we try to adjust some detail. At the end, what defines Cartier is that everybody wants to make a common effort to develop the right technique, to achieve the right aesthetic.

Carlo Mazzoni
The gold cape is part of the Libre collection?

Marie-Laure Cérède
Yes, indeed. This is a one piece. It’s created entirely out of chainmail. Fully made of gold, diamond, onyx. You can remove the sleeves and it opens.

Carlo Mazzoni
Can it be worn both by a man and a woman?

Marie-Laure Cérède
Nothing is gendered here. For the sake of good design.

Tradition and contemporary go hand in hand

Carlo Mazzoni
Could it be possible to compare the techniques of the jewels that Cartier are presenting at the exhibition in Mexico City to the new collections like the most recent Libre?

Pierre Rainero
There is a total continuity. We don’t oppose tradition and contemporary. Tradition is based on permanent evolution. It’s rather a matter of relevance. Relevance is the essence of our activity. We are sponges, we absorb everything that happens around us.

Novelty and confidence at Cartier

Carlo Mazzoni
Is relevance also a matter of confidence?

Pierre Rainero
We propose something that should be one choice among others. We do value competition, as far as competition brings something different.

Marie-Laure Cérède
Confidence has to do with not being bound by trends.

Pierre Rainero
We have a responsibility to bring something new all the time. To discuss what is permanent and what is versatile. We have a grammar, we have a vocabulary, we have also a kind of spirit and culture that goes with it. Is that Cartier? – yes, it’s just like that, a simple question. It’s like a contract with our clients.

Carlo Mazzoni
Do people realize the number of hours that are necessary to actually make a jewel?

Pierre Rainero
We have many things that you cannot see in the process. People will not measure all the difficulties that were dealt with in the making of that piece. If the price goes to high, many could not see why it costs so much. It’s a question of respect towards the client, even if it’s the real cost.

The Cartier collection: the archive and the patrimony

Carlo Mazzoni
During this current Spring 2023, the Cartier Collection is displayed the Museo Jumex in Mexico City. The title is Cartier Design: A Living Legacy, presenting a museological project signed by Frida Escobedo and the curation of Ana Elena Mallet. Pierre, if you have to choose few iconic ones among the many?

Pierre Rainero
Even the exercise that would consist in choosing one piece by decade would be vain.

Carlo Mazzoni
Shall we include a piece or at least pieces, made with the art of glyptics?

Pierre Rainero
Sculpted stones, even if it’s not figurative, even if it’s geometry, like melon cut stones, are relevant all through the jewelry range, and even in watches.

Emeralds, Sapphires: Cartier’s history

Carlo Mazzoni
In 1911, Britain was preparing for the Delhi Durbars, celebrations during which King George V and Queen Mary were crowned Emperors of India. Jacques Cartier, the youngest of the brothers who headed the London branch, traveled to India as quickly as possible and made contact with the Maharajahs. From this trip the jeweler brought back engraved gems, a technique typical of Mughal jewelry. Why did Cartier name it Tutti Frutti?

Pierre Rainero
The idea of using carved stones comes from that part of the world. In our archives it was called Hindu Jewelry or Indian Jewelry. And it was the market in the Sixties that started to name those pieces Tutti Frutti. It became associated with Cartier. At one point we said okay, we will make that name ours.

Carlo Mazzoni
Emeralds and sapphires, for instance, were combined as early as 1903. That was an age of freedom in the use of color from the early years of the century: Fauvism created a furore at the Salon d’Automne of 1905.

Pierre Rainero
The Indians used to mix green and red only. At Cartier, we chose to use blue and green, which didn’t exist.

Eric Nussbaum: Unlike diamonds, colored stones have no rules

Carlo Mazzoni
I would rather go for the emerald but looking at the books you have in this room, the feeling is that a ruby is more precious.

Pierre Rainero
There was a historical person at Cartier, Eric Nussbaum. He’s the one who built the Cartier collection. He once told me: The only thing, the only reason why I could kill someone would be for a ruby. Unlike diamonds, colored stones have no rules. Diamonds are framed into criteria: clarity, color. It’s a bit annoying because it comes to chemistry or mathematics. And we don’t like that, because we like stones that have a charm, and it doesn’t necessarily match with those criteria. With colored stones it’s subjective. Of course, some colors are more valued than others, but it also depends on your taste.

Carlo Mazzoni
There is the sapphire.

Pierre Rainero
Sapphire and rubies belong to the same family. Anyway, some are rarer than others. Especially now, because we ourselves have decided not to buy rubies.

Cartier: contemporary rubies and emeralds from Africa, sapphires from Madagascar

Carlo Mazzoni
Today rubies should be coming from Africa?

Pierre Rainero
Yes, or they should be old stones that could be Burmese.

Carlo Mazzoni
Can you recognize the difference between an old stone and a new one?

Pierre Rainero
There’s an impression, that is only an impression, that the most recent extraction from Burma for rubies and from Colombia for emeralds are not at the same level as the old stones extracted before the ban that was imposed by the US. My impression is that the rubies I was seeing from contemporary extraction were coming from Africa. And we see emeralds coming from Africa, too.

Marie-Laure Cérède
Madagascar is for sapphires. Emeralds are coming from Tanzania, more or less.

Cartier Design: A Living Legacy – the exhibition in Mexico City at Museo Jumex: the curation of Ana Elena Mallet and exhibition design by Frida Escobedo 

Carlo Mazzoni
Which will be the oldest piece at the exhibition in Mexico City?

Pierre Rainero
We have pieces from the beginning of the Twentieth century. I think platinum and diamond and the so-called garden style, which is not, again, a name that was given internally, but by the art market.

Carlo Mazzoni
When was the crocodile done?

Pierre Rainero
Much later, in 1975. The snake, which is going to be on the cover of the catalogue, was made in 1968. Maria Felix told me once that she has always loved big jewelry, but coming to Cartier she was sure to get big jewelry with good taste.

Platinum as a means: Cartier

Carlo Mazzoni
In the closing years of the Nineteenth century, Cartier was one of the first major jewelers to support recent research by the German chemist Wilhelm Carl Heraeus, who rendered platinum both purer and more accessible commercially. It was in 1899 when Cartier decided to work with platinum.

Pierre Rainero
Platinum was already known as an expensive metal but not used in jewelry. It was the time when we could work with only a melt of platinum. Cartier was working closely to the researchers for that. Jewelry is a matter of light: for respect towards the stones themselves, to bring light to the stones, but also to the person. If you bring light to the person who wears a piece of jewelry, it’s a victory. Platinum is an illustration of this principle. You can use less metal compared to gold.

The mounting almost disappears. In platinum you can make big pieces with less metal. Platinum is 20 percent heavier than gold, but it’s so solid that you can put a small quantity of metal and you can multiply the articulation without making the piece fragile. So, to answer your question, this is a way to choose a piece to illustrate the Cartier philosophy, a piece made of platinum in the early days, because that was revolutionary at the time.

Platinum or Gold: Cartier was among the first jewelry houses to use platinum

Carlo Mazzoni
Cartier was the first one that started using platinum?

Marie-Laure Cérède
Yes. We imposed it in the world of jewelry. To do that we had to train all the craftsmen. We also had to revolutionize the perception of the clients, because the clients didn’t perceive platinum as positional, even if it was expensive.

Carlo Mazzoni
Is platinum more expensive than gold today?

Pierre Rainero
Yes, the family of platinum, like palladium and rhodium, is more expensive.

Carlo Mazzoni
Are you still using platinum in your collections?

Marie-Laure Cérède
We do use it because a piece of jewelry, or a watch, shouldn’t be a constraint to your movements, it should accompany them and also, enhance them, make your movements easier in a way. And that’s a kind of philosophy also.

Decision-making at Cartier: Gold vs Platinum

Carlo Mazzoni
At what part of the process do you think about using gold or platinum?

Marie-Laure Cérède
Early stage. Sometimes it depends also on the technique. The creative team has a strong input on this, it’s about the volume at the beginning.

Carlo Mazzoni
Weight is always a question.

Marie-Laure Cérède
If it’s too heavy, it could be inconvenient. If you don’t feel it, this is also inconvenient. The sensuality, the playfulness. The weight is part of it.

Carlo Mazzoni
When you conceive an entire collection, what is more or less the balance between platinum and gold, or do you go completely free?

Marie-Laure Cérède
In fine jewelry it’s more gold. In watches we have series in platinum because they are the most sought after by collectors in general.

Cartier watches: the purest shape for a watch, is the Tank

Carlo Mazzoni
Even if Cartier is a jewelry house for most of us, it is ranked the second position in the world of watchers.

Pierre Rainero
Cartier expresses a difference when working on shapes. Technique was whether obeying to the shape or a reason to create something different in terms of shapes. The purest shape for a watch, is the Tank.

Carlo Mazzoni
Do the watch collectors want more gold or platinum?

Marie-Laure Cérède
Some models historically were made first in gold, are more sought after in gold. If collectors want something different, they will pick the platinum. We changed the blue cabochon sapphire into a ruby for the platinum models. We had even discussions: we received orders and in some cases the people ordering a watch in platinum didn’t want the ruby cabochon. Even for us who works in jewelry, it’s not so easy to distinguish between platinum and white gold. In the past, they would obtain white gold by adding nickel to gold and it was white. Today nickel is forbidden for allergy issues. Today white gold is more, let’s say, grayish gold.

Pierre Rainero
Today, usually, white gold is rhodium plated. It’s even more precious, because it’s white gold, 18 karat gold, plus rhodium to make it whiter. This kind of subtlety of colors is something we think about when choosing between white gold and platinum, in order to play with the contrast with yellow gold. The preciousness goes into details that nobody will see, into the noise they make.

Cartier watches: The noise will always be different

Carlo Mazzoni
The noise? Can you recognize the noise?

Marie-Laure Cérède
There are collections that have movement, like Clash. They are designed for the pieces to move and to produce a noise. There is this acoustic look. When you decide the number of elements, how you combine them together. The noise will always be different.

Carlo Mazzoni