Originally published by Jack Forster on Hodinkee.
Naturally, here at HODINKEE we tend to think of Cartier as a designer and maker of luxury watches – which they are – but it doesn't hurt for us to remind ourselves that Cartier is also a jeweler and, in fact, nothing less than one of the grand maisons of haute joaillerie dans le monde (how's about that French? Nothing says fancy like saying it in French). You would therefore expect to find many instances in which the two domains overlap and you would be right; one such place is in the Coussin collection.
"Coussin" means "cousin" but it also means "cushion" (why the words for cousin and cushion should be homophones in French is a question perhaps best left to a cultural anthropologist, preferably a French one), and the cases of the Coussin watches are, indeed, cushion-shaped. The rounded and inviting forms are of course, rigid to the touch at least most of the time, but this year Cartier has come up with something pretty unexpected: A Coussin watch with a cushion case that actually deforms under pressure, just like ... well, like a cushion.
