When Cartier was the girls’ best friend

The word ‘jewel’ makes the heart beat a little faster. Great jewels have always epitomised beauty, love — illicit or sanctified —romance, danger and mystery. And no one knew better how to cash in on this mystique than the firm of Cartier, for years the go-to jewellers for discreet, elegant razzle-dazzle. Its customers were kings, princes, maharajas and the whole of ‘society’. The iconic panther brooch it created for the Duchess of Windsor sold for $7 million (in 2010).

When Francesca Cartier Brickell, searching for a special bottle of champagne in her Cartier grandfather’s cellar, spotted a battered leather trunk in one corner, she opened it to find bundles of letters, each tied and neatly labelled. It was, she realised, the story of her family: her grandfather had been the fourth generation to work for the business before it was sold in 1970. It is mainly on these that her book is based.

Like many American books, it’s too long for its subject, being packed with the sort of obscure detail fascinating to family members but less enthralling to others. I could have done instead with more direct quotes, and more anecdotes about the women who bought these amazing jewels — Grace Kelly’s huge diamond solitaire engagement ring was one — and wore them so flamboyantly.

Having said that, the story of the family’s rise from simple artisans to originators, creators, super salesmen and friends to the rich and famous is extraordinary. It rests largely on the shoulders of three brothers, Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier.

The first step was taken by their grand- father, Louis-François, born in 1819, the eldest of the seven children of a metal worker father and washerwoman mother. To raise the family a notch on the social scale, his father had managed to get him apprenticed to a jeweller in Paris, jewellers then being considered middle-class.