From Paper to Metal

Men's Folio visited the Cartier Manufacture and Maison des Métiers d'Art earlier this year to discover the unparalleled craftsmanship and innovation within those walls.

- Asaph Low

With a history dating as far back as 1847, it is hard to look beyond the momentous day when Louis-François Cartier took over his master Adolphe Picard’s workshop situated at 29 rue Montorgueil in Paris that has since sparked 177 years of splendour. The early days of the maison were focused on jewellery-making for an enviable group of royal clientele. It was not until 1904 when Monsieur Cartier’s grandson Louis Cartier created Cartier’s first wristwatch — the Santos — for his aviator friend Alberto Santos-Dumont. While the watch was meant to be a functional tool for Santos-Dumont, little did Louis Cartier know that it would become one of the pivotal icons of Cartier’s history and alter the maison’s trajectory.

Influence of the Santos watch proliferated and — slowly but surely — other era-defining watch creations such as the Tonneau, Tortue, and Tank came into existence. The ebb and flow of Cartier’s watches over the decades to come ultimately necessitated their own manufacturing facility, which finally opened its doors in 2001. Other facilities in the neighbouring Swiss Cantons form the greater Cartier Watchmaking Manufacture.

The first steps of watchmaking begin with Glovier, situated in the Jura. Steel and gold watches are produced and assembled in Villars-sur-Glâne, located in the canton of Fribourg, while Cartier’s latest technologies are tested in Couvet. Cartier’s Maison des Métiers d’Art — located inside an old renovated farm — is a stone’s throw from the La Chaux-de-Fonds facility, Nestled in the heart of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, the Cartier Manufacture stands tall as a beacon of unparalleled craftsmanship and innovation.