Made by Cartier London in 1937, the breathtaking Tiger’s Eye turban ornament is the perfect marriage of Indian jewellery traditions and modern European Art Deco design. A stylised interpretation of a sarpech (a traditional ornament worn at the front of a turban) with an upright aigrette (a feather, or feather-like spray), this piece features a superb 61.5-carat cognac-coloured diamond encircled with white diamonds and surmounted with a plume of baguette-cut diamonds. It was acquired by Jam Sahib Sir Digvijaysinhji, the then Maharaja of Nawanagar, when he was in London for the coronation of King George VI in 1937.
Nawanagar was a princely state in India before the country gained independence from Great Britain in 1947. It was geographically located within the contemporary state of Gujarat. Today, Sir Digvijaysinghji is remembered for the magnanimous role he played during the Second World War, when he sheltered 650 Polish orphans in Nawanagar until they could safely return home.
In the world of Cartier, he is remembered not only for his Tiger’s Eye turban ornament, but also as the successor to another significant client, his uncle, Colonel Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji (better known as ‘Ranji’), the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar from 1907 until his death in 1933. Ranji was celebrated internationally as a first-class cricketer, and was the first person of colour to play for England (in a Test match against Australia), in 1896. Ranji was also a senior statesman in the Indian Raj, the first Indian Ambassador to England, and a regular speaker at the League of Nations.
Cartier’s relationship with various princely families in India began with Jacques Cartier’s trip to India in 1911 to attend the Delhi Durbar, a major festival at which King George V and Queen Mary were crowned Emperor and Empress of India.
During this two-week long celebration, Jacques was an official resident of the Imperial Encampment – a vast area of temporary accommodations for local dignitaries of the British Raj, international guests and various princes from around India who came to pay obeisance to the Emperor and Emperess. The princes were accorded lodgings and space commensurate with their rank within the British Imperial structure, and many came with vast entourages of wives, children, servants and entertainers.
It was at the Durbar that Jacques first met some of the princes who would later become important Cartier clients and, in the case of Ranji, lifelong friends. Jacques even contributed to Roland Wilde’s biography of Ranji, published a year after the Jam Sahib’s death. In the text, Jacques described Ranji’s knowledge and love of jewels, particularly emeralds, and the important commissions he made from Cartier, which helped to replenish the Nawanagar Treasury.
Among these commissions was a diamond necklace Jacques described as ‘a really superb realisation of a connoisseur’s dream’. Although its whereabouts are now unknown, the piece was the inspiration for the Toussaint necklace, which is also on display in the NGV exhibition. Made for the 2008 film Ocean’s 8 (dir. Gary Ross)- and named after Cartier Paris’s creative director from 1933, Jeanne Toussaint, the necklace was cut from cubic zirconias rather than diamonds. And while the original was designed to be worn by the Maharaja himself, the 2008 near replica was shortened to sit comfortably on a woman’s decolletage.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, we find two more jewels inspired by turban ornaments but intended for a female wearer.
The first is a 1938 shoulder brooch, on display in a case entirely devoted to Jeanne Toussaint. An important figure in the history of Cartier, Toussaint followed in Louis Cartier’s footsteps by encouraging the Maison’s designers to seek inspiration in world cultures, including the traditional jewellery of India, some of which was illustrated in Colonel Thomas Hendley’s Journal of Indian Art and Industry: Indian Jewellery, a 1909 book that was part of Louis’s reference library.
The form of the 1938 brooch, which is made from clusters of gemstones, pearls and gold and enamel floral motifs, is similar to the Indian turah – a dangling ornament made from gold and precious stones bunched together and suspended on fine threads. This ornament can be seen in historical images of Mughal princes, suspended from turbans, and, in an enlarged form, suspended from a horse’s bridle on ceremonial occasions. The photograph of the Maharaja of Alwar at the Delhi Durbar in 1911 on page 86 provides a fabulous illustration of such a turah ornament attached to a sarpech.
‘These pieces designed and made by Cartier London and Cartier Paris are just a few of the unique and creative jewels that speak to an abiding interest in Indian culture and its ornamental traditions’ – Dr Miranda Wallace
Another 1930s Cartier jewel possibly inspired by a turban ornament is a citrine and diamond tiara found in the final room of the NGV exhibition, where it is displayed alongside twenty- three other magnificent tiaras, all exemplary of the jeweller’s creativity and technical virtuosity.
Like the Tiger’s Eye turban ornament, this tiara was created by Cartier London in 1937, a boom time for formal jewels worn at events celebrating the coronation of King George VI. Featuring a large octagonal citrine with a dark golden-orange hue centrally mounted at the crest of the tiara and surrounded by baguette-cut citrines and round old- and baguette-cut diamonds, this tiara’s bandeau also includes many more baguette-cut citrines. The band itself is set in gold (most suited to the warm tones of the citrines) and platinum, and its central ornament is detachable, so it can be worn as a clip brooch.
Exemplifying fertile cross-cultural influence, this tiara could be interpreted as belonging to what jewellery historian Oppi Untracht described as ‘a new category of Euro-Indian sarpech-aigrettes, which combine the formal aspects of Indian design with the technological innovations of Europe’. Untracht attributed this innovation to interactions between India’s ruling families and the grands joailliers [fine jewellery houses] of Paris, among which Cartier was pre-eminent.1Oppi Untracht, Traditional Jewelry of India, New York, Harry N Abrams, 1997, p. 388.
These pieces designed and made by Cartier London and Cartier Paris are just a few of the unique and creative jewels that exemplify the abiding interest in Indian culture and its ornamental traditions that inspired the Maison’s creative leaders and designers in the early twentieth century. They also reveal crossing lines of connection, change and influence, from Delhi to Paris, London to Nawanagar, and even India to Hollywood, during this era.
Dr Miranda Wallace is NGV Senior Curator, International Exhibition.
This essay was first published in NGV Magazine | Issue 60 Sep-Oct 2026.
Note
Oppi Untracht, Traditional Jewelry of India, New York, Harry N Abrams, 1997, p. 388.