Welcome to our series highlighting the exceptional watches available through PERPETUAL, Phillips’ boutique service offering immediate access to the world’s rarest and most desirable timepieces. You can view all currently available watches by stopping in at our London headquarters at 30 Berkeley Square, or by visiting Phillips PERPETUAL online. Our new "Buy Now" button makes acquiring the watch of your dreams easier than ever.
A swanky icon from the swinging sixties, the Cartier Crash is arguably one of the most disruptive designs in the horological world since its debut in 1967.
Given the recent craze for fancy shaped Cartier creations, this fabulous contortionist has regained its status as the ultimate holy grail collectors fight tooth and nail over, just to have a chance to flash the Crash.
The legend of its origin is compelling and is sometimes romanticised. While many believe the Crash was the jeweler's attempt to materialize the distorted clocks in Salvador Dalí's famous painting – The Persistence of Memory, others swear by the highly plausible rumour that the watch was, in fact, a Baignoire that had melted after being engulfed in the flames of a burning car.
The true accounts were finally addressed in 2019 by Francesca Cartier Brickell, who recounts a conversation with her grandfather, Jean-Jacques Cartier, about how the design actually came about in her book, The Cartiers (you can read an excerpt from the book about the Crash's creation here).
Many of Cartier's most eccentric timepieces can be traced back to one address, Bond Street London. For north of three decades, Jean-Jacques Cartier was at the realm of the London outpost and was a champion of producing watches for a more adventurous clientèle, each channeling their own distinct flair without deviating from the Maison's design DNA.
According to his granddaughter, the Crash was resulted from the joint effort of Monsieur Cartier and one of the most influential artisans at the time, Rupert Emmerson. Together, the pair played with Cartier's visual identity, stretching and bending it with much more audacity than his predecessors.
Recent auction results clearly show the strong interest for the finest examples of a Cartier Crash. It is believed that only a handful of Crash pieces were produced during the 1960s due to the complexity of the case shape as they had to be created by hand. Even up until present day, the Cartier Crash has only been released in limited series in the 1980s, '90s, 2000s, and 2010s.
As you might expect, vintage Crash examples typically command the highest prices, as illustrated by numerous auction results recently achieved at Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo, such as this circa 1970 18k yellow gold Crash London (sold for US$453,600), this circa 1992 Crash in platinum (sold for HKD $2,646,000), and this incredibly rare 1994 18k pink gold Crash made for the Hong Kong market (sold for CHF 214,200).
The present 18k yellow gold, manual-wind Cartier Crash dates to 1997, where it was part of a 200-piece run produced by Cartier in France. An even smaller number within the 200 pieces were further set with brilliant-cut white diamonds on the bezel of the case and the crown.
The watch comes with its original certificate that confirms an original sale date in March 1997. Today, however, it can be purchased once more, immediately from Phillips PERPETUAL, for £92,500.
Phillips PERPETUAL offers a boutique experience to clients for both the sale and purchase of fine and rare watches, in London’s Berkeley Square and the Gstaad Palace, in Switzerland.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade reporting on every aspect of the watch business. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He splits his time between New York and Geneva.
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