Dazzlingly beautiful and full of surprises and delights, this is an essential complement to any jewelry lover s collection. Cartier s peerless talents have continued to amaze decade after decade from the 1930s into the twenty-first century with figurative pieces that feature wonderful fauna and precious flora to items of carefully mastered abstraction, from virtuoso work in gold to chromatic harmonies sometimes bold, sometimes subtle. In chapter after chapter, Cartier Jewelry presents the trajectory of a pioneering firm and illustrates the power of constantly renewed styles based on a fine balance between imagination and know-how, freedom and experience. The second half of the twentieth century was to provide an inexhaustible repertoire of forms for decorative objects and finery. Fashion writer Nadine Coleno situates the emergence of Cartier s creations in their historical and stylistic context, making it possible to understand them more accurately, to remember them more precisely, and to appreciate more clearly their singularity. This volume is an eloquent reminder of why precursors always remain a few strides ahead of everyone else. The lifetime of an artist is made up of periods of inspiration, pause, and feverish discovery; the history of a house such as Cartier follows a similar trajectory. Cartier is an entity composed of multiple talents, which over the years have turned the name of a dynasty of jewelers into a universal gold standard.