Francesca Cartier Brickell on preserving Cartier's history of fine-jewellery making
Cartier historian Francesca Cartier Brickell talks about uncovering her family's history in the jewellery business.
Francesca Cartier Brickell has spent the past 10 years researching and recording the story behind jewllers Cartier.
My grandfather was amazing — he was a real artist and he designed lots of wonderful Cartier pieces. But when we were children, what was great was he could draw the most amazing animals or anything we wanted. He entertained us like that. As we grew older, we heard about these wonderful stories of his life. But it was very much from a family perspective rather than from a jewellery perspective, although that's obviously intertwined. He sold the family business a few years before I was born and retired and moved to the south of France.
It's often the case: you need someone outside the family to tell you that what you were listening to was quite interesting. So when I first met my husband, he came to my grandfather's place in the south of France and was listening to all these stories. He was like 'you've got to be writing this down. This is crazy. This is amazing.' So then after that I asked my grandfather if I could record his memoirs and he said yes. It was about 10 years ago.