Early examples of Cartier’s platinum ‘Tortue’ are extremely rare, with very few examples known today. If this were not enough, it has a most exciting provenance as a gift for Christmas 1922 to the socialite Audrey Pleydell Bouverie from HRH Edward, Prince of Wales, to whom she had been romantically linked. To find a platinum ‘Tortue’ with such originality and exalted provenance is a Cartier collector’s dream piece.

The Cartier Tortue was designed in 1912 as a time-only wristwatch. French for turtle, the ‘Tortue’ is distinctive for its gently curved case. It was characteristic of Prince Edward that he would choose a gift from the most fashionable of jewellers, Cartier, pick their most ‘modern’ wristwatch design, the ‘Tortue’, and in the most fashionable material of the time, platinum. The inscription engraved on the back of the watch 'from E P, Xmas 1922', the “P” for Prince, is a facsimile of Edward’s own handwriting copied in engraving by Cartier, a habit that he continued for the rest of his life that can be seen on many of the spectacular jewels that he bought for his wife, the former Wallis Simpson, from the 1930s onwards. The present watch is particularly interesting in showing that the Prince of Wales was already a customer of Cartier as early as 1922. Later, as Duke of Windsor, he became one of their most famous and important clients.

The silvered dial has developed an even patina of age and features stylised Breguet type numerals instead of the usually seen Roman numerals. The movement was supplied by the European Watch & Clock Co. Inc., hand-engraved and gilded in the Paris workshop. The number 22043 is consistent for the movements used by Cartier Paris prior to 1925. The number 11192 punched on the case back is Cartier’s Paris stock reference number, the number 4386 is the London stock number. Scholarly research suggests that this number could be either a number given to watches sent for repair, or a number used for ‘re-sale’ pieces bought back for stock and then later resold, a common occurrence at the time.

King Edward VIII (1894–1972)
Later styled Duke of Windsor and was King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India from 20 January 1936 until his abdication in December of the same year. The eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George V and Queen Mary, he was created Prince of Wales on his 16th birthday, seven weeks after his father succeeded as King.

Audrey Evelyn James Coats Field Pleydell Bouverie (1902-1968)
Audrey James of West Dean Park was an English socialite who was included in ‘The Book of Beauty’ by society photographer Cecil Beaton. Through her mother, she was the illegitimate granddaughter of King Edward VII and herself was the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon. A former fiancée of Lord Louis Mountbatten, she was romantically linked to Edward, Prince of Wales. Audrey first married Captain Dudley Coats MC, in March 1922. He died only five years later from injuries sustained in WWI. As Mrs Coats, she was already a bright star on the London social scene before she met and later married department store magnate Marshall Field III in 1930. They divorced in 1934. Audrey married her last husband, the Hon. Peter Pleydell-Bouverie, son of the 6th Earl of Radnor in 1938. They divorced in 1946.