TIDBITS 08/30/09

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We encourage you to forward this email to friends and colleagues. ====================================== The Mascot

Once upon a time a long long time ago--in the year of 1847 there lived a jeweler in the land of gay Paree who established a firm and aspired to make jewelry fit for a queen. His name was Louis François Cartier. And he had a son named Alfred who had among his clientele King Edward VI of England and King Alsonso XIII of Spain and Czar Nicholas II of Russia and many more.

And then one day Alfred went to the great jeweler's hall in the heavens and left behind his sons who began making jewelry which was too exotic for royalty but fit perfectly into the heady atmosphere of the audacious millionaires of the day. They had among their customers people like Daisy Fellowes ... the Singer Sewing Machine heiress as well as the Duchess of Windsor.

For some time now--since 1915 in fact--one of the sleekest animals of the jungle had begun prowling its way around the Cartier design studio. It was the Panther. It could be found on a lapel watch brooch. It lounged lazily in a 1920's advertisement. And then it had litters ... and an explosion of bejeweled panthers and other cats began draping themselves over rings and pins and bangles and brooches. And suddenly ... the panther became known as the Cartier Mascot.

The first of this new litter preened and glared at the world atop a

152 carat cabochon sapphire brooch. It had square sapphire spots and canary yellow diamond eyes. It was awesome. It was fierce. Who would dare glare back at it. None ... except perhaps for the Duchess of Windsor who wore our ferocious feline pinned to her coat in 1967 as she went to an event at the Marlborough House in London.

Cartier's jewelry had become some of the most celebrated of the 20th century. But here's the conundrum that faces much of the hoi-polloi of today: How does one who is not part of that world get to see pieces such as the one I just described. How do we ... the deprived ... the underprivileged ... those of us not born to royalty ... those of us who have not yet won our lottery tickets ... those of us not born to the Huttons or the Hearsts or the Gettys or the Trumps ... those of us without the acumen or luck or correct placement on this earth ... how do we get to see this stuff?

Ah yes ... well ... believe it or not ... I have the answer. A long long time ago a jeweler in the ancient world by the name of Tylerus Adamus--I've mentioned his name before so some of you may be familiar with him--set up a genetic pool that would one day ensure that one of his distant relatives (that would be moi folks) would be gifted with the task of passing this info on to others. He would not know why he was doing it ... he would not know that it was pre-destined. All he would know was that some mystical urge would overwhelm his senses every Friday ... and he would pass this precious knonwledge on to others. So it was written ... and so it was done.

So ... ya wanna see a panther squatting on a 152 carat sapphire orb?

For those of you who are new to this thing called Tidbits...may I direct you to my home page at

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where you will scroll down the left side menu till you get to the area that says Current Tidbits ... and you will see represented on our pages an image of a Cartier Panther atop a cabochon sapphire ... value not given. And there ya have it. That's it for this week folks. Catch you all next week. Benjamin Mark