Cartier's hidden debt to Islamic art unearthed in new exhibition

The Louvre’s acquisition of two exquisite ivory pen boxes in 2018 has sparked an entire exhibition on the hidden connections between the house of Cartier and the world of Islamic art. Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity will run through February 20 at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs (MAD) in Paris, and then will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art, where it will be on view from May 14 to September 18, 2022.

The two boxes, originally made for the court of Shah Abbas (1587-1629), the ruler of present-day Iran, had made their way into the collection of Louis Cartier by 1912.

In researching the cases, “I realised that no one knew about his personal collection of Islamic art,” says Judith Henon-Raynaud, deputy director of the Louvre’s Department of Islamic Art, who co-curated the show at the MAD. She realised she could use the cases as a jumping-off point—not simply to illustrate Cartier’s nascent Orientalism, but to demonstrate the “importance of the discovery of Islamic art on Western artists.”