Cartier's New High Jewelry Collection Looks to the Past to Imagine Its Future

Predictability is the enemy of delight. Which is why, when a new high jewelry collection spins a history of innovation forward—wait, is that rock crystal? Coral? Lapis? Opal? Malachite?—we notice.

We were in Florence, so naturally humanism came up—the Medicis too. One of my first stops in that city is always the Medici Chapel of the Princes, where the walls are adorned in marble and inlaid with jasper, lapis, mother-of-pearl, quartz, and coral. I gasped later that day when, at a high jewelry presentation inside a historic villa, I saw a carved lapis Cartier necklace, and I gleefully noted the way turquoise was used to heighten the color of the emerald in another piece. And then there was the tassel with the garnet and spinel beads also outlined in turquoise.