The Tank Chinoise celebrates the essence of Cartier watchmaking

The Cartier Privé Tank Chinoise 2022 riffs elegantly on a Chinese aesthetic in evolving a landmark of modern-day horology.

Cartier Masse Mysterieuse.

Louis Cartier, grandson of Cartier founder Louis-François Cartier, believed in idées mères, or “mother ideas”. That is, ideas that give birth to other ideas.

It’s a philosophy that fits perfectly with the maison’s Cartier Privé collections, which see Cartier revisit some of its legendary watch shapes and designs in super-limited editions for collectors. In the six years since Privé first launched, this has included the Crash, the Tonneau and last year, the Cloche de Cartier.

In 2022, the lesser-known Tank Chinoise is in focus. The new launch celebrates 100 years since the maison introduced the style and features six novelties. They include three models in yellow gold, rose gold and platinum, and three open-dial, skeletonised-movement models decorated with red and black lacquer, one of which is set with 161 brilliant cut diamonds.

Pierre Rainero, director of image, style and heritage at Cartier, says the Privé collections speak to the essence of Cartier watchmaking – a devotion to shape, line and proportion. The Cartier Privé Tank Chinoise has in fact been tinkered with slightly, with the dial lengthened to be more rectangular than the square of the original 1922 version.

“As far as the Privé collection is concerned, we … are following that very basic intuition from Louis Cartier to go to essential shapes,” he says. “There’s a global vision about essential shapes, and then in each of the shapes that are selected to be part of this collection you have possible evolutions. The Tank Chinoise, for instance, is a good example because it belongs to that family of Tanks, but also it can show how this essential shape … can include variations, and very interesting variations.

Cartier Privé Tank Chinoise 2022.

“A strong design is a design that finds its relevance all through the different generations. So, in thinking of Privé and introducing or reintroducing or developing the collection, that’s what we have in mind — strong design. In some cases – it was the case for the Tank Chinoise because the proportions for it have been slightly changed – those proportions didn’t exist exactly in the past. So in this collection also we will add a new episode to the story of the Tank Chinoise.”

The Tank Chinoise nods to Chinese architecture in the gold bars that run horizontally at the top and bottom of the dial (in addition to the vertical ones present in each version of the Tank), resembling the entryway to temples. It’s there also in the red and black lacquer detailing on the dial. Chinese decorative techniques and architecture and their aesthetic have been present in Cartier collections since the early 1920s, when the maison would adventure to China (and beyond) to seek inspiration and new ideas of beauty.

“Everything started with the idea that the notion of beauty is very subjective … or at least it can evolve geographically and temporarily, meaning that, according to the moment in which you live, you have a different notion of what is beautiful,” says Rainero. “It evolves with time, and it evolves from one culture to another. So, this is the basic perception Cartier had at the beginning of the 20th century, to extend the possibilities of creation. That’s why the idea came to look at other cultures and other periods also. Chinese culture was one of the sources of inspirations, as well as many other sources of inspiration from many other continents and periods.

The original Tank Chinoise of 1922.

“When I say inspiration, it’s in terms of shapes, lines and the aesthetics, associations of colours, but also it can be symbols, it can be materials. And a kind of philosophy of beauty.”

The Privé collection was launched in March in Geneva as part of the Watches and Wonders fair and was not the only horological feat for Cartier. Included in the maison’s impressive display was the dazzling Masse Mystérieuse, a piece some eight years in the making and which showcased the watch’s movement as a visible oscillating mass through the open-dial watch face.

“There’s a beauty about mechanical movements to be seen, and to think that it can be mastered by [people], that timekeeping notion,” says Rainero of the piece’s somewhat hypnotising allure of the piece.

The maison also launched a new form in the Coussin de Cartier. The plumped-up shape of the diamond-set watch, whose name translates to “cushion” in English, is flexible to the touch.

For Rainero the creation of a new shape presents exciting possibilities. “The expression of beauty is a different one,” he says.

“You go into a different design with more freedom … What I love with this shape was the idea we had to put the stones upside down. In French we say, it’s nerveux, meaning it’s edgy. [You] can feel the edge but it’s not aggressive. Of course, everything is as smooth as it should be at Cartier … but in terms of perception of a design, I think it gives something very interesting.”

Ultimately though, as Rainero notes, the most beautiful creations, the best mother ideas, retain their hold on the imagination because people want to wear them. Even 100 years later.

“It’s twofold, our way of creating,” he says. “It’s first a search for a beautiful object and exploring new ways of creating beautiful objects. Second – but it doesn’t come second, it comes at the same time – it’s that idea of being relevant, and in many different ways.

First, the proposition of beauty we have has to be relevant to our times, but also the way the object can be worn … this is a question we raise all the time in front of a new project of design: ‘Who and when will a person have a desire to wear this object? And will it correspond to a natural way of wearing it?’”

This natural mode, says Rainero, comes particularly easily with Cartier’s Tank.

“For me, it’s an epitome of elegance … when you think of what a Tank is, it is the simplest shape possible – it’s two parallel lines linking the two parts of the straps – and I think that notion of elegance was born from the attempt to reach that purity. You can feel it when you wear it, but also when people look at it. Everything is necessary to the object but nothing is unnecessary.”