'Soudanais' Bangles
circa 1919 (t) and 1920
(b)
(coral, onyx, ivory,
enamel and diamond)
Classic, spectacular Cartier pieces. Each has a swag of its own, with one
dancing to its own bouncing dots, wiggling lizard tails and berries of popping
coral while the other sways to the deep drum of its echoing, domed mosque and
to the wedding dance taking place below its arch, patterned with swirling skirts, dried
leaves and pattering feet. Tinges of African rhythm and Oriental charm snake
through the bangles' cores, loud and playful and colourful. They carry the
sweet and rough scents of the Sudan. They mime facets of an equatorial culture.
They shed the native songs they have been taught to hum against the skins of
their wearers. But while these bangles are meant to be inspired fragments of a
country seen as foreign and exotic by Cartier's clientèle (and by its mere admirers), it is most likely the represented country itself which would find
such fragments as most foreign.
