Cartier

The exuberance of the Roaring Twenties following the First World War, saw the production of large numbers of jewelry, timepieces, and decorative pieces that catered to who's who of the Jazz Age. Maison Cartier being the preeminent jeweler of the period produced a variety of objets de vertu crafted with Art Deco aesthetics that underlined the cosmopolitan modernity of the 1920s. 

Their use of materials such as jade, coral, lacquer, and mother-of-pearl was drawn from the mania for Oriental elements in art, décor, literature, and architecture that swept through in Europe and the United States, while their aesthetic echoed the bold geometric forms of Art Deco, blending modernity with historical and foreign influences.

The period during which Cartier founder Louis-François Cartier’s grandsons: Louis, Pierre, and Jacques took over the firm in the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, saw some of the best examples of this movement. 

Additionally, to power their exceptional timepieces, during the 1920s Cartier teamed up with Edmund Jaeger to form the European Watch and Clock Company. The joint venture granted Cartier exclusive access to all movements produced by Jaeger for a period of 15 years. Watches such as our present timepiece containing movements produced by the European Watch and Clock Co. have since become highly sought after for their rarity and technological ingenuity for the time.

Our present timepiece encapsulates the golden period of Cartier design and the Maison’s collaboration with an icon of horology. The rare European Watch and Clock Co. movement is cased in an unusual and rarely seen raised prism shape of carved nephrite. The timepiece is decorated by a blue enamel bezel set with diamonds. The dial is composed of two separate disks of mother-of-pearl set with applied Roman numeral indices.

Mary Ethel Weinmann was born in Paris in 1929, the youngest daughter of Count and Countess Andre and Ethel de Limur (née Crocker, granddaughter of Charles Crocker), and the present timepiece was likely purchased by the Count and Countess.

Count Andre de Limur(1890-1971) was born in Vannes, Brittany. After graduating from the Jesuit College of St. Xavier, the University of Paris and the Cavalry School at Saumur, he served in the French armed forces in World War I, first as a cavalry officer, then as a pilot, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his conduct. De Limur married Ethel Crocker (d. 1964) of San Francisco, California, in 1918. He joined the French diplomatic corps and held posts in Madrid, London, and Washington. When France fell in World War II, de Limur resigned from the French Embassy, became an American citizen soon thereafter, and joined the U. S. Army in 1942. De Limur participated in the D-Day landing, worked as General George Patton's liaison with Free French forces, and took part in the liberation of Paris. After the war, De Limur served for a time as president of the Georgetown Citizens Association, and founded the Alliance Francaise in Washington. Andre de Limur died on January 30, 1971 at the age of 80 in Washington, D.C.

The Crocker and De Limur families have been associated with philanthropy and arts patronage since the late 19th Century. Ethel De Limur was a leading patron of Impressionist Art who helped organize a series of exhibitions that first introduced Impressionism to California in the 1890’s.

The family legacy of patronage includes founding The Crocker Art Museum, the longest continuously operating art museum in the Western United States.