Cartier

SJX
[Purist]
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Cartier: The Watchmaker

All the text that follows here and in the follow-up posts are from a recent press release. All the images are from Cartier. However, the press release is informative and the images are excellent, hence this deserves a multi-part post.

Text in italics are my comments, all the rest is from Cartier. 

- SJX

Part 1: History

Cartier : The Watchmaker

When Louis-Francois Cartier at the age of 28 established his first, somewhat modest, business in Paris in 1847 there were very few indicators of the great developments and future that lay ahead. Six years after the establishment of his jewellery workshop and first boutique Louis-Francois Cartier realised that fine timepieces would be as important to his clientele as were his jewellery creations. Thus in 1853 the first watches find their way in the Cartier archives and a great watchmaking story begins.

Above: The Cartier clockmaking workshop on rue Lafayette in Paris, headed by Maurice Couet, 1927. On the shelf at the back is the famous Egyptian clock. On the workbench, a Chimera mystery clock is being made.   

Between 1853 and the 1890's Cartier timepieces consisted of mainly pocket watches and ladies jewellery watches in the form of pendants, necklaces and rings. Cartier at the time already had created a watchmaking department and was employing its own watchmakers based in Paris. By the early 1900's the passion for fine timepieces had engulfed the grandson of the founder, Louis Cartier, and the modern era of Cartier watchmaking starts with the design of the first wristwatch for men on a leather strap in 1904, the Santos watch.

The Santos watch was immediately followed by a number of other iconic wristwatches such as the Tonneau in 1906, Tortue in 1913, Tank in 1917. Movements were produced either in France or Switzerland and Cartier watches continued to flourish with the introduction of innovative complications that resulted from the exclusive collaboration between Louis Cartier and Edmond Jaeger at the time.

Over the years that followed, Cartier timepieces continued to be highly sought after and production was concentrated in various sites in Switzerland. In 1972 Cartier realized that in order to fully control its own movement production was to embark on a plan to create a fully integrated manufacture. The quest for the brand to reach autonomous manufacture status finally became true in 2003 with the integration of all the brand's watchmaking facilities under one roof, at the Cartier Manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Above: Assembly of Central Chronograph movement  

Inside this Manufacture and the brand's Geneva tourbillion workshop is where the movements of today and tomorrow are designed and build. It is from here that a new era in Cartier watchmaking begins.

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