The return of colour

This colourful brooch by Cartier, dating from the 1920s, designed as a bowl of flowers decorated with carved rubies, emeralds and sapphires, and highlighted with diamonds and black enamel, was originally in the extensive jewellery collection of Hollywood star Mary Pickford, a pioneer in the American film industry.

Wide, flat bowls, urns or baskets filled with fruits and flowers and set with multi-coloured gemstones were typical of the work of Charles Jacqueau (1885-1968), arguably the most innovative of the Cartier designers of his day.

These jewels were the result of the merging of different influences such as the design of 18th century delicate ‘giardinetto’ brooches and rings with the bold chromatic contrast introduced by the Ballets Russes (first performed in Paris in 1909) which mesmerised the public with their colourful exoticism.

Jean Henri Prosper Pouget (died 1769), Traité des pieres précieuses et de la manière de les employer en parure, Paris, 1762; a page of ‘giardinetto’ ring designs

Both Louis Cartier and Charles Jacqueau were fascinated by these performances and were frequent visitors. Although first designed around 1913, these brooches remained popular after the war and remained so well into the 1920s, eventually developing into the iconic Cartier ‘Tutti Frutti’ jewels of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Léon Bakst (1866-1924), set design for the ballet Sheherazade

Charles Jaqueau’s collaboration with Cartier lasted two decades, and his greatest merit is that of having encouraged the firm to abandon the monochromatic formality of the ‘Garland Style’ and embrace bright, colours, bold shapes and exotic influences to become the champion of a new aesthetic.

Mary Pickford (1892-1979) as a Ziegfeld Follies girl, shot by Alfred Cheney Johnston (1885-1971), 1920

It was largely thanks to Charles Jacqueau’s stimulus that Cartier produced some of the most convincing examples of proto-Art Deco jewels well before the outbreak of the First World War, and gained an artistic advantage that distinguished the firm from its rivals.