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The Cartier Column
Alessandro Mendini
The Cartier Column is a unique work imagined by the Italian architect and designer
Alessandro Mendini. The artist wanted “to create an idealized symbol of utopian purity,
one that would replace religious devotion and the ostentation of royal power with a nonreligious,
abstract and spiritual treasure.”
Thanks to an extraordinary set of precious and semi-precious stones that could no longer
be of use to Cartier, Alessandro Mendini has created an exceptional “endless column”
that produces a magical play on radiance and reflections. Following the principles of
Greco-Roman architecture in a feat of ingenuity, the column is composed of seven blocks
stacked around a central axis: after being selected, the stones were sorted into categories,
encapsulated in crystal cylinders and inserted vertically inside pink gold fluting. Topazes,
citrines, peridots, emeralds: all the stones in this lapidary collection were set in epoxy
resin following 24 hours of polymerization. The Cartier Column stands 2.30 m high,
weighs 400 kg and contains 24 kg of gold; it required over 18 months of work, from the
preliminary sketches to the final creation.
The Cartier Column was first presented at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2009 with the Jeweled
Triangle lamp by David Lynch. It was subsequently shown at Art Dubai in 2011, along
with the first showing of a series of eight drawings by Mœbius entitled Matter and Light.
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