TUTTI FRUTTI
EXOTIC SPLENDOR - CARTIER AND THE INDIAN STYLE
TUTTI FRUTTI
From India came the precious stones that led Cartier to invent a luscious multigem style that became a hallmark of the House in the 1920s. These flamboyant pieces, later known as Tutti Frutti jewels, consisted of colored gems carved into leafy shapes, combined with cabochons and smooth or ribbed beads. The modern, highly visual way in which these Indian stones were assembled reveals an astonishing grace.
The most striking piece is surely the “Hindu necklace” commissioned by Daisy Fellowes in 1936. A woman of enormous elegance and deliberately outrageous taste, she had Cartier create for her a flexible collar of rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds set in platinum, with, in the center, a removable clip brooch composed of two huge sapphires.
The necklace was almost certainly based on one made in 1935 by Cartier for the Maharajah of Patna, using his own diamonds, emeralds and rubies. Curiously, Daisy Fellowes’s jewel places significant emphasis on sapphires, considered an unlucky stone in the Indian tradition.
