As part of the Milan Furniture Fair Cartier hosted an extravagant pop-up space called “Precious Garage.”

Titled “When the Ordinary becomes Precious”, the pop up exhibition was hosted at Garage Sanremo, a landmark on Via delle Fosse Ardeatine in the heart of the city.

Cartier ventured into a rebellious new direction for Milan Design Week – here the worlds of form and mechanics collided in the Precious Garage exhibition designed for Cartier by New York-based Puerto Rican visual artist Desi Santiago.

Known for his scenic performance work, Santiago stages installations shaped by socio-cultural references to the worlds of nightlife and fashion, Santiago explored the theme of appropriating everyday hardware elements as jewellery.

Though it was an industrial high-shine grease monkey set installation, it still had the hand of Cartier over it

A garage installation through the eyes of a nonconformist, free-spirited jeweller with a balance of edginess, elegance and sophistication, where the worlds of form and mechanics met in this industrial-meets-opulent space

A suspended Corvette with gold body paint that turns neon at night, with golden liquid oozing onto the floor, will be among the features of a garage-chic pop-up installation by Cartier

At its centerpiece was suspended a gold Corvette with neon LED lighting, accented with a gold “spill” oozing onto the floor alongside gold-encased nuts, bolts and rims.

The C3 Gold Corvette on display is suspended from the ceiling, but is made to look as if it’s perched on a single-post hydraulic lift.

It appears as if gold is oozing from the Corvette, down the lift and onto the floor.

UK designer ron arad

Spare Parts Wall

Behind the car on the wall are car parts that also appear as gold and there are even stacks of tires just like a real garage.

Packed with plenty of gold painted auto parts, the space puts the spotlight on two new lines of precious jewelry: ‘Juste un Clou’ and ‘Écrou de Cartier’

Tools & Cartier Jewellery wall

Cartier presented the new Juste un Clou and Écrou de Cartier collections ( based on nuts and nails ) in “When the Ordinary becomes Precious“

Golden walls, mechanics, tools and of course nails & nuts – the Clou and Ecrou were the stars of the night, all bright and declined in several models in the middle of this exquisite location.

On display were two of Cartier’s heritage-inspired pieces; the Juste un Clou torque necklace based on the original Nail Bracelet designed by Aldo Cipullo in the seventies, and a spin-off bracelet from Cartier’s Écrou de Cartier line embellished with nuts.

These stunning pieces were displayed in working tool drawers scattered among the car mechanic tools of the trade

“ Looking at the history of the Juste un Clou bracelet, which is about very strong design establishing a link between [the world of] mechanics and jewellery, and transforming ordinary everyday objects into exceptional pieces, the idea of presenting during design week felt natural ”………. Arnaud Carrez ( international marketing and communications director at Cartier.)

These days the boundaries between Art, Design, Fashion and Luxury are very difficult to define and, Cartier’s Precious Garage project turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to offer the world a new, young and modern view of Cartier

Cartier Precious Party

Cartier hosted an exclusive evening party to celebrate the “When the Ordinary becomes Precious” exhibition in Milan as wel as the creation of the new Juste un Clou and Écrou de Cartier collections.

Entertainment on the evening was by French-Venezualan-Cuban duo IBEYI and the DJ Clara 3000 also from Paris.

About Cartier

Founded by Louis-François Cartier in Paris in 1847, Cartier has grown to become one of the world’s most illustrious luxury brands.

The company has a long history of sales to royalty and celebrities. King Edward VII of England referred to Cartier as “the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers”.