Cartier Sixième Sens: a new high jewellery collection for the senses

With its new made-in-Paris treasures, Cartier has made a plan to tantalise. Unveiled this month, Sixième Sens par Cartier, the master jeweller’s latest high jewellery collection, counts a number of landmark creations. All are realised from prestige materials – including emeralds, sapphires, garnets and, in the case of the Coruscant necklace, diamonds of six different cuts, among them kite, baguette and triangle – their obtainment adhering to the code of practice of the Responsible Jewellery Council.

The collection’s name translates as “sixth sense”; instead of an academic or scientific reading of the five basic human senses – sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing – and sensory perception, Cartier instead approaches the theme with creative flair. Take, for example, Cartier’s Phaan ring. Here, a complex tiered construction frames an outsized ruby of 8.20 carats with diamonds and ruby balls that glisten when the light hits. The central stone itself has been placed atop a rose-cut diamond: it’s a precious lighting aide that further amplifies the ruby’s saturated red hue, which calls to mind sweetly-scented fruit or a flavoursome treat.

Next up: hearing, a sense that may be matched with Cartier’s Alaxoa necklace. Made up of many bright green emeralds and dotted with light-refracting diamonds, the design is the result of a labour-intensive technique that at Cartier has heritage, and requires makers to artfully match gems in colour and size, before threading individual stones onto a thin wire to form slim strands and cascading fringes. These are then linked with small metal bridges; the goal is a collier that is mobile, has volume and moves just so.

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The making of the Alaxoa necklace remains by far not the only homage Cartier has paid to its illustrious past with Sixième Sens: a Parhelia ring with a cabochon-cut sapphire of 21.51 carats is of architectural appeal and updates the maison’s peacock motif, a blue-and-black colour combination first made popular by Louis Cartier.

Cartier’s Meride necklace – its list of ingredients counts diamonds, black onyx and rock crystal – follows a checkerboard inspiration. Monochrome, multi-layered and seemingly caught mid-movement, with its Meride, Cartier plays tricks on the eye. The gem’s visual illusions are a high-carat nod to the masterworks of optical art.

It’s a comparison that could also be made for the yellow-gold Pixelage necklace, a tribute to the panther paid in topaz, onyx, diamonds and coloured diamonds. At Cartier, the wild cat has been house-mascot since 1914, when the brand debuted a wristwatch lavished in onyx and diamonds, its pattern recreating the animal’s distinctive fur, and commissioned George Barbier with the illustration for a paper invitation starring the noble creature. This year’s evocation also homes in on the panther's marbled fur in a geometric collar that meets in a trio of golden-hued topazes. Sparkling and of undulating surface, Pixelage is inviting to the fingertips.