Cartier has always had a passion for the beauty and diversity of nature. The jeweler cultivates a fabulous garden overflowing with precious blooms and plants—sweet briar, laurel, rose, lilies, lotus and edelweiss as well as palm trees and cactus …
While drawing from a traditional floral repertoire, the Maison also unhesitatingly turns to rarer specimens in its increasingly original designs. The orchid is one such singular species and a favorite flower for Cartier. The jeweler chose it for its unusually delicate, yet sculptural, beauty. Already in 1925, the fascinating flower, paved with diamonds and studded with onyx cones, adorned a hair comb presented at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. Twelve years later, it appeared in a more stylized interpretation, in which the pastel hues of aquamarines and amethysts soften the design’s rigorous lines.
As charmed as ever by the orchid, in 2005 the Maison dedicated an entire High Jewelry collection to the flower. Its masterpiece is an impressively naturalistic necklace. Rendered with infinite care, the flower spreads its sculptural, flowing petals, one of which holds an 18.40-carat rubellite. The pinkish red of the ruby veins of the petals mingles with the garden green of the emerald beads in a floral palette. Studded with rubies and alternating with rubellite drops, the beads cascade sumptuously into an asymmetrical pendant, which gradually tapers off, evoking the random profusion of nature.
Despite the abundance of gems in the composition, the unprecedented piece is spectacularly comfortable to wear.
The shape of each curve and the position of each stone have been carefully designed to follow the body’s natural contours and movements.
