An emerald pendant steals the spotlight from a model's wing tattoos.
Weber and co. did their homework, ultimately including passages on a host of famous clients—not all of them American—some of whom had interested the photographer previously and some not. For example, he had known little about the Mexican actress Maria Felix and her association with Cartier, which was notable for her flamboyant choices. And he came to a deeper appreciation for the elegance of Grace Kelly. He includes odes as well to Brooke Astor, Doris Duke, Barbara Hutton, Jackie Kennedy, the Duchess of Windsor and Polish opera singer Ganna Walska. Gary Cooper, Rudolph Valentino and Muhammad Ali are all shown wearing watches, and there’s a photo of General John Pershing, whom Cartier presented with a prototype of the Tank Watch, which was inspired by Renault’s armored tanks. Entries on artists often feature Weber’s own portraits, as he acknowledges, among others, Jean Cocteau, for whom the Trinity ring was created and who designed many pieces ultimately produced by Cartier; Salvador Dalí; Roy Lichtenstein, Francesco Clemente, Louise Bourgeois, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, Robert Rauschenberg, Balthus, Cy Twombly. As for Ed Ruscha, he’s depicted, not in a Weber photo, but in his old wedding announcement, in which he’s in bed with two women. The caption reads: “Ed Ruscha Says Goodbye to College Joys.”
At least two dear friends of Weber’s count among Cartier’s dearest as well. The photographer lavishes attention on Taylor, including the Riveria series and a personal essay that starts with a shared meal at New York’s Il Cantinori before recalling his youthful fascination with her. Just before his bar mitzvah, Weber called Taylor at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas from his home in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and was actually put through to her room, only to speak with her then-assistant, Mike Hanley. Miss Taylor, the audacious young caller learned, was unavailable, “watching Eddie’s show tonight with Yul Brynner and then she’s going out afterwards to a party somewhere with Sammy Davis, Jr. and his band.” Weber writes that they later became friends and that, post 9/11, he took her unannounced to a New York city firehouse where she sat on the lap of a firefighter, “like a cheerleader with her star quarterback from Notre Dame.”
Weber gives considerable space, too, to the late C.Z. Guest. He calls her, “a woman who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. She was a woman who went out and worked. She was up at six in the morning exercising and then writing and then gardening and then doing charity work. I mean, she was a really useful person.”
Boys in tiaras.
Yet the book is no grande-dame fest. To represent Cartier’s current, younger clients, Weber engaged illustrator-cum-model Thalita McDonnell, who came up with a cartoon of 11 current tabloid fascinations, including Angelina, Gwyneth, Demi, Sienna and Katie Holmes, all with their names painted on their frocks, toasting the jeweler at a party under a banner reading, ‘Happy Birthday Cartier.” He opted not to show such au courant women in borrowed red-carpet regalia. “I was against using [those photos]. I just felt that they were not representative of what I felt Cartier was really about.”
