Duchess of Windsor's Cartier Panthere Bracelet

Jeanne Toussaint's panthers

Cartier's great cat jewels are tied to Jeanne Toussaint, a Belgian-born woman who became Louis Cartier's companion and, in 1933, the head of the firm's high jewelry. She was nicknamed 'Panthere' by Louis Cartier, according to the 2010 sale catalog, or 'Pan Pan', according to Cartier family historian Francesca Cartier Brickell, who traces the name to a 1913 trip to Africa. She wore leopard skin and owned a panther vanity case. Accounts of her career differ on dates: the 2010 catalog says her association with Cartier began in 1915 and that she died in 1978, while the Cartier family history gives 1918 and 1976.

Toussaint did not draw the jewels herself. She directed a group of designers, the most important of them Lemarchand (named Peter in the 2010 catalog and Pierre in the Cartier family history), who set the panther's silhouette in the 1940s. He went to the zoo at Vincennes to sketch the big cats from life and study how they moved. Jean-Jacques Cartier considered Lemarchand the person who most deserved credit for the postwar animal jewels.

The first three-dimensional panther made in the Cartier workshops was a brooch for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1948: a gold panther with black enamel spots lying on a 116.74-carat cabochon emerald from the Duke's own stones. In 1949 the Duke bought a panther clip with sapphire spots sitting on a 152.35-carat Kashmir sapphire. Other famous owners of Cartier cats included Barbara Hutton, Princess Nina Aga Khan and Daisy Fellowes.

The Duchess buys it herself

Wallis Simpson met Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1931 while she was married to Ernest Simpson. Edward became King Edward VIII in January 1936 and abdicated on December 10, 1936, to marry her. They married in France on June 3, 1937, and spent the rest of their lives in exile as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Through those decades the Duke gave her a string of jewels, many commissioned from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels and inscribed with private messages.

The panther bracelet is unusual among them. Cartier's records show it was bought in December 1952 by the Duchess herself, not by the Duke, the house's very good client recorded as 'S.A.R. Le Duc de Windsor.' The matching panther brooch followed only in 1966.

The Duchess kept adding cats for almost twenty years after the 1948 brooch: a pair of lorgnettes with a tiger handle in 1954, a tiger bracelet in onyx and fancy yellow diamonds in 1956, and its matching clip in 1959.

1952: a new queen, an old exile

The bracelet was bought in the year the Duke's younger brother, King George VI, died. George VI died on February 6, 1952, and his daughter Elizabeth, then visiting Kenya, became Queen Elizabeth II. The king's coffin was carried through London on February 15 to be buried at Windsor.

The Duchess's purchase came at the end of a year in which the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb and Dwight D. Eisenhower, as president-elect, traveled to Korea to look for a way to end the war there. In Paris, Cartier was producing some of the most technically demanding jewels it ever made.

Geneva 1987 and London 2010

The Duke died in 1972 and the Duchess on April 24, 1986. At her request, the proceeds from her jewels went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The sale was held in a tent at the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva on April 2 and 3, 1987, with about a thousand invited bidders there and a thousand more bidding from New York by satellite. A contemporary report says the panther bracelet, called the Duchess's favorite, drew more than $1 million. The first night alone brought $33.5 million, a record for a jewelry sale, and the whole sale more than $50 million against estimates reported at $7 million to $7.5 million.

The bracelet was shown at an exhibition on Cartier at Goldsmiths' Hall in London in 1988 and in 'Cartier and America' in San Francisco from December 2009 to May 2010. Cartier made a fitted case for it after the 1987 sale.

On November 30, 2010, it was offered again at auction in London as lot 19 of a 20-lot sale of jewels and objects from the Duchess's collection, estimated at GBP 1 million to 1.5 million. Bidding passed GBP 3 million to gasps in the room, and the bracelet sold for GBP 4,521,250 including fees, reported at about $7 million, the highest price ever paid for a bracelet at auction and the most for any Cartier piece. It was bought for the Cartier Collection, the jeweler's own historical archive. The singer and director Madonna, then making a film about the abdication, was reported to have tried on several pieces before the sale and to have shown particular interest in the panther. All 20 lots sold, for a total of GBP 7,975,550.

How it is built and how to know it

The 2010 catalog describes an 'articulated body designed to encircle the wrist and to assume a stalking attitude,' pave-set with brilliant- and single-cut diamonds and calibre-cut onyx, each eye a marquise-shaped emerald. It is about 195 mm long in total and about 165 mm as worn. It opens in two places, under the head and in the middle of the back, and the tongue of the back clasp is inscribed 'Cartier, Paris.'

It is stamped for 18-carat gold and for platinum, with French assay marks and maker's marks, and numbered 07532. The diamonds weigh about 15 to 16 carats. Its width runs from about 25 mm at the shoulders to about 12 mm across the back and about 5 mm at the tail. The condition report noted that the emerald eyes are well matched and medium strong green, that five small diamonds and one onyx were missing, and that the piece is extremely flexible. It set its record despite the missing stones.

What sets it apart from earlier Cartier panthers is that the cat is not a flat pattern on a bracelet but the bracelet itself. The body is built in sections, each hinged so the animal moves as it wraps the wrist. Cartier went on to make panther jewels in every pose, but the Cartier family history calls this 1952 bracelet the high-water mark of the form.

The numbers

Diamond weight

About 15.00 to 16.00 carats, brilliant- and single-cut

Other stones

Calibre-cut onyx; two marquise-shaped emerald eyes, described as well matched, medium strong green

Clarity grade

Not published; diamonds described as very bright and lively

Origin mine

Not recorded

Maker

Cartier, Paris; numbered 07532; 18-carat gold and platinum

Length

About 195 mm overall, about 165 mm wearing length

Timeline

1. 1933

   Louis Cartier puts Jeanne Toussaint in charge of the firm's high jewelry.

2. Dec 10, 1936

   King Edward VIII abdicates to marry Wallis Simpson.

3. Jun 3, 1937

   The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson in France.

4. 1948

   Cartier makes its first three-dimensional panther, a brooch on a 116.74-carat emerald, for the Windsors.

5. 1949

   The Duke buys a panther clip seated on a 152.35-carat Kashmir sapphire.

6. Dec 1952

   The Duchess of Windsor buys the onyx and diamond panther bracelet from Cartier in Paris.

7. 1966

   The matching panther brooch is bought.

8. 1972

   The Duke of Windsor dies.

9. Apr 24, 1986

   The Duchess of Windsor dies.

10. Apr 2, 1987

    The bracelet sells for more than $1 million on the first night of the sale of the Duchess's jewels in Geneva.

11. 1988

    Shown in a Cartier exhibition at Goldsmiths' Hall, London.

12. Dec 19, 2009

    Goes on view in the exhibition 'Cartier and America' in San Francisco, through May 9, 2010.

13. Nov 30, 2010

    Sells at auction in London for GBP 4,521,250, a world record for a bracelet and for Cartier, and joins the Cartier Collection.

The world in 1952

• Feb 6, 1952

  King George VI, the Duke of Windsor's brother, dies; his daughter becomes Queen Elizabeth II while visiting Kenya.

• Feb 15, 1952

  George VI's coffin is carried through London on its way to burial at Windsor.

• Jul 19, 1952

  The Summer Olympics open in Helsinki.

• Oct 8, 1952

  The Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash near London kills 112 people, the worst British rail disaster since 1915.

• Nov 1, 1952

  The United States detonates the first hydrogen bomb, 'Ivy Mike', at Enewetak Atoll.

• Nov 29, 1952

  President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower travels to Korea to look for a way to end the war.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Duchess of Windsor's Cartier Panthere Bracelet is number 23 of 100 in the jewelry entries of the FLOAT 100. 44 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (27 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Cartier's ledger records the bracelet as bought by the Duchess herself, not by the Duke, which the 2010 catalog called unusual.
• It set its world record with five small diamonds and one onyx missing.
• Cartier's designer studied the panthers at the zoo at Vincennes, sketching the cats from life.
• The bracelet opens in two places, under the head and halfway along the back.
• Cartier bought the bracelet back for its own historical collection in 2010.
• The first Cartier three-dimensional panther, made for the Windsors in 1948, lies on a 116.74-carat emerald.