Retailing: Sale af Cartier's

What the Rothschilds are to banking, the Carders have been to jewelry. Descended from a metal craftsman who worked for Louis XV, the Carder family opened its first jewelry store in Paris in 1847, by the early years of this century had prospered sufficiently to set younger sons up in business in London and New York. Cartier's of Manhattan, which has been corporately independent of its Paris and London cousins since 1919, is more conservative than Tiffany's and more luxurious than Van Cleef & Arpels. Equally famed for custom-crafted goods at extravagantly high prices ($1,000,000 for a 107-carat emerald...