Details
Circular dial with Arabic numerals, jasper, lacquer, malachite, radium-painted hands, circa 1935, mechanical movement, 10.5x10.0x3.0 cm, signed Cartier France, red Cartier original fitted case
Literature
O. Bachet & A. Cartier, Cartier Exceptional Objects, Éditions Palais Royal, 2019, book II, p. 219 for the photograph of this clock
Special notice
On lots marked with an + in the catalogue, VAT will be charged at 7.7% on both the premium as well as the hammer price.
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Lot Essay

RADIUM PAINT
Radium (Ra) is a chemical element discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie on 21st December 1898. Combined with paint, it was used in the early 20th century on the dials and the hands of clocks, allowing the time to be read at night without using electricity. Typically the radium dials were painted by young women, using their tongues to sharpen brushes before painting fine lines. Unfortunately due to the strong radioactivity of radium this lead to serious jaw-bone diseases.
In 1925 in the United States a group of these women got together, the Radium Girls, and sued. By 1930 all dial painters stopped pointing their brushes to their mouth. Nowadays the most common substance used to make dials luminesce is Super Luminova, which is a barely radioactive substance.

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