The Shape of Time — Cartier

Most watch houses make their case on the back of the watch, in the movement. Cartier made its case on the front — and proved, more completely than anyone, that a shape could be a form of seriousness.

This monograph is a study of that argument. While the rest of watchmaking chased complication, Cartier chased form: the Santos, born of a promise to an aviator; the Tank, drawn from the lines of a battlefield; the Tonneau, the Cloche, the Crash, the Cintrée — a vocabulary of shapes so assured that a Cartier can be recognised across a room from its silhouette alone, with no logo required. That is the rarest kind of design authority, and it did not happen by accident.

We walk the house from Louis Cartier and the birth of the wristwatch through the shapes that made it unmistakable, the craft of the Collection Privée era, and the reasons a house long miscast as a jeweller sits, on the evidence, among the most important watchmakers of the century. Richly illustrated, with a glossary of house terms.

A shape, it turns out, can say everything.

For those who understand.