Cartier

Cartier was a Paris jeweller before it was a watchmaker, and it shows: the house thinks in shapes where the Swiss think in movements. That is not a criticism. Almost every non-round watch case in wide use today is a Cartier idea.

In 1904 Louis Cartier made a flat, square-ish watch for his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aviator, who could not read a pocket watch while flying. The Santos is generally taken to be the first wristwatch designed for a man to do a job in. The Tank followed in 1917, its lines borrowed from the tracks of a Renault tank seen from above.

Cartier has made its share of serious movements, and its Fine Watchmaking collection is taken seriously by people who care about such things. But the house's real achievement is a century of shapes that still look modern — the Crash, the Baignoire, the Pebble — made by a jeweller who never accepted that a watch had to be a circle.