Marion Cartier was born on 14 April 1911 at the Plaza Hotel in New York. She was the only child of Pierre Cartier and his wife Elma Rumsey. At the time, Pierre was described by the American press as a "wealthy Frenchman," though the Cartier name was still largely unknown in the United States.
During the First World War, Marion was placed in the care of her aunt and uncle while both Pierre and Elma were ill. She grew up between New York and Paris, straddling the two worlds her father had connected through Cartier New York and Cartier Paris.
In 1932, Marion visited the Claudel family at Brangues in the Dauphine and became engaged to Pierre Claudel, son of the French ambassador and writer Paul Claudel. They married on 9 April 1933 in New York, with special dispensation from the Pope because the ceremony fell during Lent.
Pierre Claudel joined the family firm and worked alongside his father-in-law for about twenty-five years. After Jacques's death in 1941 and Louis's death in 1942, it was Pierre who suggested that Marion and her husband take over the Paris operations. The manufacturing workshop Marel Works was named as a contraction of "Marion" and "Elma," linking mother and daughter in the firm's infrastructure.
Marion was also a painter, having studied at the Beaux-Arts in New York. Later, after settling in Geneva at the end of the 1950s, she took up stained glass, working within the Chiara studio for nearly twenty-five years. Marion had five daughters.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 5 ("New York, New York"), ch. 8 ("The Depression"), and ch. 10 ("Inheritance").
