A fascinating history of the Cartier family, fabled Parisian jewellers

A fascinating account of the fabled Parisian jewellers recounted by the founder's descendant offers an in-depth study of how to run a durable family business

Big businesses often have fascinating beginnings. John Pemberton, for instance, came up with an early version of Coca-Cola as a cure for his morphine addiction. Joe Foster settled on the name Reebok after he came across the word “rhebok” — Afrikaans for a type of antelope — in a South African dictionary he had won in a race as a boy. The founders of HP flipped a coin to decide whether their company would be called Hewlett-Packard, or the other way round.

By comparison, Cartier’s origins are uninteresting. Adamant that his son mustn’t follow him in the metalworking industry, Pierre Cartier