THE CARTIER COLLECTION

2010, PRAGUE

From 9 July to 17 October 2010, the Prague Castle Riding School played host to the "Cartier at Prague Castle - The Power of Style" exhibition, which featured over 360 historical Cartier pieces. This was a unique event presenting the greatest number of Cartier creations from the past ever assembled from the Cartier Collection.

The Cartier style is unique and everlasting, yet constantly evolving: it values change, be it stylistic evolutions initiated by the designers themselves, technical evolutions brought about by a continual combination of curiosity and expertise, or shifts in tastes, which Cartier keenly observes. It is this multi-faceted evolution that the Prague exhibition demonstrated so well. With over 360 Cartier pieces displayed, this major exhibition covered Cartier’s entire creative history. It highlighted the continuity between Cartier’s different stylistic periods and resulted in a fascinating retrospective of the company’s creativity reaching back over 160 years.

The design of the exhibition reflected the vision of its curator Eva Eisler, Professor at the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design.

In keeping with her own vision, she grouped Cartier items not only in chronological order but also according to aesthetic or stylistic similarities, regardless of the period in which they were created.

The Czech designer Rony Plesl oversaw the exhibition's setting. Usingthe impressive dimensions of the space available, he created a forest of steles, or “standing stones”, to majestically present each piece in a superb setting of contemporary sophistication.