Description
Two elephants meet at the front of this bangle, head to head, trunks and tusks converging at the centre. The motif gives the Rajasthan line its name and its subject: the jewellery of the Indian courts, which Cartier has drawn on since the 1910s and returned to in every decade since. The animals are modelled in the round rather than engraved into the surface, so the bangle has genuine sculpture at its front and a smooth gold band behind.
Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds are set across the piece in a range of cuts, worked as flowerheads, as accents along the modelling, and as pavé where the design calls for a run of white. This is the Mughal-derived palette Cartier has used for its Indian-inspired jewellery for over a century: red, blue and green laid against yellow gold, with no attempt to harmonise the colours into a single tone. The stones argue with one another, and that is the intention.
The bangle is signed Cartier and numbered, and carries the French assay mark for 18 carat gold together with the maker’s mark of Lully Joaillier, the workshop that executed it. The inner circumference measures 15.0 centimetres and the gross weight is 193.8 grams — the weight of a fully worked jewel, not a hollow band. It comes in a Cartier case.
