Cartier Presents “Tressage”, An Exceptional Addition To The Libre Collection

CARTIER LIBRE - THE MANIFESTO

Cartier Libre is pushing creative boundaries and challenging conventions. Designed with total freedom by the creation studios, each year sees a new collection which draws on an UNPRECEDENTED INSPIRATION to unveil bold and radical pieces, produced in limited editions.

Cartier Libre questions form and design, challenges expertise and savoir-faire in a constant pursuit of innovation. These creative explorations are part of the long-standing Cartier tradition of RICHLY INSPIRED collections from an insatiable and powerful curiosity.

Creations of PURE FORMS that defy limits and reveal new perspectives of lines, volumes, contrasts and mobility.

After having experimented with watchmaking forms, Cartier Libre opened its field of research to jewellery and to all the Maison’s realms of expression. This introduces a TRANSVERSAL VISION that explores all the possibilities of creation within the same passion.

THE TRESSAGE JEWELLERY COLLECTION - ORGANIC AND SUBLIME

The latest addition to the Cartier Libre collection, the Tressage collection, brings together three aesthetics that reinterpret the work of gold, volume and the interplay of contrasts. Included in this is a precious cape, a hybrid piece that is the fruit of a collaboration between the Cartier Design Studio and a Parisian fashion stylist. These are the Maison’s stylistic signatures, stemming from the influence of Jeanne Toussaint, Cartier’s first female creative director since 1933.

The vision and taste of this woman of character, nicknamed the Panther, gave the Maison the singularity of its style. With her, the volumes are amplified and there is nothing shy or reserved about them, just an affirmation and an invitation to experience beauty. The beads, gathered in moving structures, roll over the skin and quiver at the fingertips. Cocktail rings adorn the hands with precious and sophisticated designs. Gold is abundant and generous, be it polished, gadrooned or braided. It became the field of exploration for Jeanne Toussaint who associated it with new chromatic combinations, such as turquoise and coral. This creative freedom has only grown over time to become an essential element of the Maison’s identity. A powerful imprint that is reflected in this collection.

GOLD BEAD CHAINS AND PRECIOUS ROLLERS

A ring and a bracelet, radiant gold jewellery with generous volumes. Precious clinking creations whose material, composed of a multitude of gold beads, invites you to touch and play on the skin. The gold sphere is an emblematic shape of the Maison, as early as the time of Jeanne Toussaint but also more recently with the Paris Nouvelle Vague Collection.

For this new collection, the challenge for the jewellers was to create the illusion of a continuous chain that would wrap around itself to create voluminous jewellery. The artisans succeeded in giving us this impression, but in fact, it was thanks to a multitude of strands made up of moving gold beads of different sizes that they were able to create this uniformity. The strands were assembled one by one on a metal structure with chain decorations meticulously crafted by the jeweller, in order to allow the adjustment of the moving strands within the continuity of the lines in the design.

MATERIALS IN TENSION

Cartier pushes the boundaries of appearance and transforms hard materials like gold and stone to give the illusion of supple, living forms that precious bonds cannot seem to contain. This jewellery transformation is based on the Maison’s stylistic vocabulary, the gadroon, the manipulation of volume and stones, and gives rise to three worlds, each composed of a bracelet and a cocktail ring.
First, there is yellow gold, a precious material dear to Cartier, which enhances its brilliance by embellishing it with gadroons. The jeweller exalts its volume under the dual constraint of the regular channels that compose it and the diamond-paved links that secure it.

In contrast, metaquartzite, an opaque black stone with pyrite inclusions, is partly cut from the piece. This requires the stonecutter to carve the gems in a process that is precise and delicate, and which threatens to undo hours of work with the slightest movement.

Finally, obsidian reveals a material with a singular iridescence made of gold flakes that stand out against a brown background. The cabochon cut makes these silky iridescences even more visible through the material. The chains that bind it seem unable to hold back this precious magma whose intensity seeks to be released, to spread out, to emerge from itself.

Yellow gold, metaquartzite or obsidian, this tension-filled density is streaked with platinum strips set with inverted diamonds. A technical decision that reinforces the sensation of a link that twists on itself in an over and under effect. Here the technique serves the aesthetics.

TWISTED CORAL - BRAIDED DIAMONDS AND GOLD

Gold, diamonds and coral: this colour palette is in keeping with Jeanne Toussaint’s chromatic heritage. Cartier transposes it into a game of illusion to create a ring and a bracelet. Because the band that encircles the wrist or goes around the finger is in fact a powerful trompe-l’oeil. It required the meticulous assembly of a succession of metal elements to compose the pattern. The coral has been cut into cabochons by the lapidary, a meticulous task that, due to the fragility of the material, can be undone at any time.

This game of transformation relies on the expertise of the Ateliers Cartier jewellers who adapt their techniques to the constraints: they have chosen the classic pearl grain setting between the diamonds and the double strap setting of paved diamonds on the sides of the strands. And to give an impression of relaxed constraint to the stones placed at the end, the grain setting with tracery, also called the “swallowtail”.