Cartier

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Part III: Cartier d'Art

Next are the Cartier d’Art watches. These demonstrate various artistic skills like enamelling and mosaic, usually depicting various animals. This year sees a new technique – flattened straw – used for the Rotonde de Cartier with koala motif.

It sounds silly but the straw dial is actually tremendous work. About 40 hours are required to make the koala dial, because the straw has to be split, hammered and cut before being assembled into the design. The result is a matte dial with muted colours that only reveals its details up close. The watch is 35 mm in white gold and is limited to 20 pieces.

A horse rendered in a mosaic of semi-precious stones like jasper and obsidian is the next in the Cartier d’Art collection. The dial is composed of 400 tiny pieces of stone, all cut and assembled by hand. This is in the Santos Dumont case, in white gold. It’s limited to 40 pieces and another 10 set with diamonds.

And then comes my favourite of the Cartier d’Art, the Rotonde de Cartier with tiger motif executed in email grisaille. This is a technique of enamelling that renders the subject in black, white and all the greys in between. The enameller starts with a plain black enamel dial before painting on additional layers for the design.

The tiger depicted is solemn and has gravitas. It is really striking and evocative. 100 of these will be made in white gold.

Much more whimsical is the Tortue with cockatoo in mother of pearl and enamel. The cockatoo’s body is comprised of bits of mother of pearl engraved to resemble feathers, while the beak, eyes and backdrop are enamel. This is a limited edition of 80 in white gold.

Also for the ladies is the Rotonde with ladybugs in plique-à-jour paillonne, a technique of enamel like stained glass. Though the enamelling technique is complex and rare, I don’t like the look of the watch. The resulting dial just doesn’t look sophisticated.

The last ladies watch is the Captive de Cartier with butterfly and flower in champleve enamel. This one is elegant, and I believe it is quartz.

Finally something for the Year of the Dragon (again). This Ronde is a limited edition of 100 pieces with an enamel dragon dial and a Piaget movement. The dial in maroon and black is too dark and consequently unattractive. A dragon motif should be brighter and more cheery.