Cartier Baignoire Watches

“It is in 1913 that this piece materializes in the form of a delightful oval wristwatch.  It is the aesthetic heir to a diamond and onyx chatelaine given to Grand Duchess Pavlovna by Louis Cartier one year earlier, during one of his stays in St. Petersburg, where he is the purveyor by appointment to the tsar and a favored supplier among the jostling among the abundance of  jewelers offering their wares to the Nobility.  An oval that the maker of shaped watches takes pleasure in stretching yet further to create, a few years later, the Baignoire Allongee watch, a female accessory basking in the extravagant excellence of either yellow or rose gold, or diamonds.  A refined allure, purity of lines, Roman numerals that seem to distort, from the smallest to the largest, along a curved vanishing line…the passing of feminine time, the hours of which possess their own poetry.” - Cartier