A cabochon crown is a watch crown topped with a cabochon: a gem shaped by polishing, with a smooth dome instead of cut facets. Cartier uses a sapphire cabochon crown again and again as a trademark detail. Setting the stone there ties a purely functional part of the watch to Cartier’s jewellery style.
What is a cabochon?
A cabochon is a gem given its shape by polishing, not by cutting. It has no facets. A faceted stone is cut into flat faces. A cabochon has a smooth, domed top instead. Most cabochons are oval. People notice slight unevenness less in an ellipse than in a perfect circle, so the oval is the usual choice. The stones set on some watch crowns break that habit: they are round. Dictionaries define a cabochon as a domed or oval gem that has been polished but has no facets.
Where is the stone set?
The stone sits on the crown. This is the small knob the wearer turns to work the watch. Turning it drives the stem, and the stem either winds the watch or sets the time. The crown is therefore a purely functional part. Putting a polished gem on its tip changes how it looks, not what it does. A plain control becomes a small piece of jewellery, while it still does exactly the same job.
Which watches have a cabochon crown?
Cartier fits this crown across its watches, and it has become one of the house’s signatures. On the Tank, a crown topped with a sapphire cabochon is one of the defining features. The same detail appears on the Baignoire and the Crash. It is also found on many other shaped watches from Cartier’s London and Paris workshops. The stone is a sapphire, and the crown links each of these models to the jewellery side of the house.
Where it comes from
English took the word cabochon from Middle French in about 1570–80. It is built from caboche, meaning head, with a suffix that means small. A cabochon is, in effect, a little head. In watchmaking, the full phrase names two things at once: the part, which is the crown, and the kind of stone set on top of it. Hence the longer form, sapphire cabochon crown, when the gem is a sapphire.
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