“Cartier And The Arts Of Islam” Exhibition

The “Cartier Et Les Arts De L’Islam. Aux Sources De La Modernité” Exhibition, presented by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris (MAD), and the Dallas Museum of Art with an exceptional collaboration with the musée du Louvre and the support of Cartier, to show the influence of Islamic Art on the high jewelry Maison Cartier in its design of jewelry and precious objects from the beginning of the 20^th century to the present day.

Geometric shapes, the combination of blue turquoise and green emerald: Cartier drew on the arts of Islam in the early twentieth century to modernize its jewelry, an inspiration that continues in the spirit of the house today.

More than 500 pieces including jewelry and objects from Cartier, masterpieces of Islamic art, drawings, books, photographs and archival documents, trace the origins of the jeweler’s interest in Oriental motifs. The exhibition explores the origins of this influence through the Parisian cultural context and the figure of Louis and Jacques Cartier, two of the founder’s grandsons, who played a major role in creating a new aesthetic suffused with modernity. 

Uninspired by the Art Nouveau movement in the early 20th century, Louis Cartier, grandson of the Maison Cartier Founder, had wanted to offer “something new. After hesitating between Russian or Persian.” The Persian won out. The arts of Islam were then beginning to position themselves on the same level as the great Western painting.

At that time, a decisive part of the jewelry was inspired by the arts of Islam, which allowed Cartier to register in modernity compared to the Art Nouveau. The geometric patterns were drawn from architecture, the bricks were inspired by the coverings of mosques in Central Asia. The association of colors also came from the East, as the use of green, the “color of paradise”, with the bright blue of turquoise, and the deep blue of lapis lazuli.

In the 1930s, the Artistic Director of the House Jeanne Toussaint introduced the mauve of amethysts and created 3D volume pieces, inspired by Indian jewelry of the Mughal Empire. Berber necklace in diamonds or tutti frutti necklace colored in the form of flowers, leaves and fruits in cut stones. Today, the geometry still exists, the patterns persist, they have passed into the DNA of the house.

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