The Pasha De Cartier Has Stood The Test Of Time

Cartier has made its fair share of oddball timepieces, from head-turning watches like the Tank Asymétrique and Cloche de Cartier to more outré designs such as the Crash. But far and away, the most unusual collection it has ever created was the Pasha.

- Celine Yap

Under ordinary circumstances, the Cartier Pasha would never have come to exist. In both form and spirit, the watch bore little resemblance to other icons of the maison. Its hulking presence was a far cry from the svelte, elegant shapes of the Tank collection. The miscellany of ornaments and fixtures all over its case make Pasha a completely different animal than the sleek and ever so refined Santos de Cartier. As much as it is a round watch, it is no Ballon Bleu whose gentle curves harmoniously adhere the watch perfectly to the wrist. On the contrary, Pasha doesn’t care to blend in. Although with that portly, mildly oversized case and about half a dozen atypical details all around, it couldn’t even if it tried.

Yet, here it is, which tells us something extraordinary had to have occurred. Indeed its name, Pasha, is a tribute to the Pasha of Marrakesh between 1912 and 1956, Thami El Glaoui. The term pasha in the Ottoman political and military system is the equivalent of British knighthood. It is said that during the early 1930s, El Glaoui, a jet-setter and regular Cartier patron, visited Louis Cartier with a request that sounds simple in the modern-day context, but was by no means an easy task to accomplish in that period.

ROYAL BEQUEST

The Pasha needed a stylish, modern wristwatch that befitted his royal status and that need not be removed from the wrist whenever the mood struck for a dip in his pool. Given the notoriously hot and dry Moroccan summers, that mood would have occurred fairly frequently. And there was no one more suited than the eldest Cartier brother to present the ideal solution.