The Cartiers - Francesca Cartier Brickell

Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the Cartier brothers, gave up a career in finance to travel the world in her search for details about her family history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more. This is the captivating tale of four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1960s. At its heart are the three brothers who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents. There was Louis Cartier, the visionary designer who created the first men's wrist watch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off his flying machine's steering wheel; Pierre Cartier, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques Cartier, the globe-trotting gemstone-expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world's best rubies, emeralds and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated "tutti frutti" jewellery. The Cartiers also reveals behind-the-scenes history of the firm's most iconic jewellery-the Romanov emeralds, the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the classic Panther pieces-and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian Maharajas and Russian Grand Duchesses to Coco Chanel, Wallis Simpson, and Elizabeth Taylor.