At the dawn of the XXe century, in the wake of the Orientalist wave in painting, Parisian high society succumbed to the charms of Persia. The couturier Paul Poiret draped the elegant women in turbans and velvet embroidered with arabesques; André Metthey decorates table services with Arabic calligraphy, Edmond Dulac illustrates a sumptuous reissue of Thousand and one Night and the choreographer Serge de Diaghilev puts on a ballet inspired by Iranian mythology.
This enthusiasm did not escape Louis Cartier (1875-1942), at the helm with his brothers of the jewelry store founded by his grandfather, recently transformed into a design studio. Himself fond of“Muslim arts”, as they were called at the time, he bargain-hunted Persian miniatures, ancient manuscripts, as well as a multitude of precious objects from India or Iran, dating from the 15e and XVIIe centuries. His collection and his abundant library feed the inspiration of the designers of the house, for whom he makes notebooks of ideas.
Colored harmonies
The result of a meticulous investigation in the company’s archives, the exhibition at the Musée des arts décoratifs analyzes in detail the correspondences between this ancient heritage and the modern style invented by the Cartier workshops. Here, the binding of a book or an ornate box inspire pendants and cigarette cases; there, an Iranian ceramic mosaic adorned with flowers serves as a project for a compact or the medallion of a delicate ivory pencil case is transposed onto the clasp of a handbag.
The play of light and shadow, enhanced by the moucharabiehs, like the geometric patterns of the zelliges (Moroccan tiles) fascinated the jewelers who added a new shape to their repertoire: the triangle, announcing the art deco style that would be all the rage in the years. 1920. The architecture of the mosques, with their brick decorations and their merlons (a kind of stepped pyramids), opens the way to complex arrangements of colored stones.
From bazuband to bracelet
In addition to designs and new color harmonies (such as the marriage of lapis lazuli blue and turquoise, common in Iran), Maison Cartier copies the construction methods of oriental jewellery. The flexible structure of the bazubands, a kind of large armbands worn by the Indian maharajahs and the shahs of Iran, serves as a model for making bracelets. Some fragments of objects are even literally embedded in new creations.
→ READ. In Rillieux-la-Pape, young students discover the cultures of Islam
Since the trips undertaken in India and the Persian Gulf by Jacques Cartier in 1911-1912, in search of pearls and gems, old or contemporary necklaces have been regularly dismantled to recompose spectacular ornaments. Those designed in the 1930s by artistic director Jeanne Toussaint combine sapphires, rubies and emeralds in an explosion of acid colors with the sweet name of Tutti Frutti !
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