Cartier Crash

CARTIER. A FINE AND RARE 18K GOLD ASYMMETRIC WRISTWATCH

CARTIER. A FINE AND RARE 18K GOLD ASYMMETRIC WRISTWATCH SIGNED CARTIER, LONDON, MODEL CRASH, NO. 8881, 1968 With nickel-finished jewelled lever movement, the off white dial with Roman numerals, blued steel hands, the asymmetric case with concealed lugs, back secured by four screws in the band, case stamped JC, numbered and with London hallmarks for 1968; dial signed and movement signed Jaeger-leCoultre 23 mm. wide and 42 mm. overall lengthUS$15,000-19,000 Jean-Jacques Cartier and R. Emerson designed the "Crash" watch in the 1960s, the first series made by Cartier London comprised only 15 examples. The hallmarks on the present lot date the watch to 1968. This model is designed after the 'limp' watch in Salvador Dali's painting The Persistence of Memory , 1931, exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Dali got his inspiration for the 'limp' watch from Camembert cheese and described it with the phrase "nothing else than the tender, extravagant and solitary paranoic-critical Camembert of time and space". A similar watch is illustrated in Le Temps de Cartier by Jader Barracca, Giampiero Negretti and Franco Nencini, 1st edition, p.295.