The sun-drenched sepia photograph shows a dapper European, handkerchief in pocket, cigarette in hand, sitting among a row of men dressed in bisht and keffiyeh. The moment was captured during Jacques Cartier’s first visit to the Persian Gulf in 1911, on his way back to London from Delhi—part of a sales trip encouraged by his father, Alfred, then the head of Cartier. The decline of the Ottoman Empire and the 1905 Persian Constitutional Revolution had flooded Europe’s artistic centers with new influences, forging an aesthetic then known as “the Muslim arts.” Eager to learn more, Jacques spent four months traveling throughout Asia and the Middle East, rifling through bazaars and emporiums and mixing with high society.
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More than a century later, the legacy of Jacques’s tour—and his lifelong admiration of Islamic and Indian design—is captured in a new book, Cartier: Islamic Inspiration and Modern Design, published following exhibitions in Abu Dhabi, Dallas, and Paris. Its pages celebrate the maison’s ongoing intermingling of traditional French craftsmanship and intricate Islamic art, depicting the fruits of Jacques’s travels across India, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman, and what is now Dubai—which radically changed the direction of Cartier’s jewelry.
Louis, Jacques’s eldest brother, became a keen collector of Persian miniatures, Islamic artifacts, and Asian art objects, sourcing treasures in Indian cities like Kolkata and Hyderabad and recruiting a client base among the ruling maharajahs. Jacques, meanwhile, eventually crossed the Arabian Sea to Bahrain in search of pearls he could set in extravagant tiaras and use to embellish vanity cases and brooches for Indian and European royalty as well as American high-society clients. In turn, Cartier became known for its deft renderings of Persian gardens, Kashmiri and Egyptian motifs, and Islamic geometric patterns—a natural byproduct of the maison’s embrace of global cultural influences.
This article appeared in the May/June 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
