Sathya Saran meets Mme Brigette Chabbert, the woman who dreams up great designs for Cartier.

Madame Brigette Chabbert has a dream. It involves two diamonds. Of fifty carats each. Almost perfectly matched.

It is rare to find such clear, large diamonds that nudge at perfection. And now that she has chanced upon them, and has them in her care, Madame Brigette Chabbert feels destiny is trying to tell her something. Perhaps that she will be able to make history with the help of these stones. Set them in such a way that they become conversation pieces across the globe. “They are Golconda diamonds but not famous” she muses, “We will have to do something to make them famous.”

But to make the magic happen, the stones have to reveal their mystery. Stones, however big or small, have a way of talking to Chabbert. And, she is waiting for her precious charges to speak. She is tuned in.

STONED ON THE BEAUTY
Ever since she left school at 17 — “I told my mom ‘I don’t like school. Could I do something else?‘ ” — Chabbert has been involved in romancing the stone. A stint at jewellery designing did not work and she moved, “with a little luck” to fill a vacancy at Cartier, where she was taught to work with stones. The romance of a lifetime began then, and today, Chabbert, as director of precious stones purchasing, Cartier Joaillerie International, finds the love affair is more magnetic than ever.

Travelling the world is part of the affair. Her search for stones that will convert to jewellery with the Cartier stamp has taken her many times round the globe.

“In the beginning, I worked with small stones, especially diamonds,” she explains. Her search for stones that Cartier could then set into jewellery took her predominantly to the countries rich in mines — Sri Lanka, Burma, India.

Passion makes us do strange things. And her passion for stones soon had the delicately-built Chabbert exchanging her chic clothes for rougher wear that included hard hats and eye protectors. And had her walking through the mines to understand the real nature of Earth’s mysterious ways of creating precious stones.

“I have also watched and learnt the art of cutting stones,” she reveals, “and now know that there is so much history to each stone.” It is knowledge that comes with its own responsibilities: “Now, when I see a stone and say ‘No, I don’t like it’, it hurts me to say it, because each stone has had so much of life before it reaches the shop where I am seeing it. It is like rejecting the labour of so many people who have worked on getting that stone to that state.”

It’s a feeling that has taught her to respect all stones, “even those that are not of our quality.” And to heighten the enjoyment in doing “the most beautiful job in the world.”

Part of her enchantment with her job comes from the fact that “every day, I learn something new, something different.” Like the time she was in Madagascar and found sapphires of very unusual colours. “The working conditions there are awful for the miners,” she says. “There is no organisation, not even safe water. And I think Cartier has a responsibility. It helps improve the conditions in such mines when it buys from them.”

Chabbert admits to a “natural flair for stones, an intrinsic understanding of their magic.” It is a quality she has nurtured and cultivated over the years, since the ‘lucky star’ took her to Cartier when she was but 24, when she joined them as the only woman in the stone department.

“You cannot buy a stone without love,” she says. “When I buy a stone, I love it. I look at it at different times of the day, at different points... And it talks to me.”
And then she tells me about the rubies.

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