Phillips Offers Rarest Cartier Portico Clock, Estimated at Up to $3.9M, at Geneva Auction

By Annie Davidson Watson | November 02, 2026

A Cartier clock whose diamond-set hands form a dragon and seem to hover in midair will headline Phillips’ Geneva Watch Auction: XXIV on Nov. 7 and 8 at the Hotel President. Portico Mystery Clock No. 4, Lot 220, is estimated at CHF 1.8 million to CHF 3.6 million ($2,190,000–$3,900,000).

The clock returns to auction for the first time since 1996. Cartier made just six Portico clocks between 1923 and 1925, and this is the only one with a six-sided dial, where its siblings have 12 sides.

Its closest relative is No. 3, which Phillips sold in Geneva in May 2025 for CHF 3,932,000 (about $4.7 million). Those two are the biggest and showiest of the six, and the only pair with square columns.

No. 4 stands 38.5 centimeters (about 15 inches) tall and weighs 10.6 kilograms (about 23 pounds). A carved rock-crystal dial hangs between two crystal columns, each trimmed in black enamel, with a jade tree at its foot. Onyx and jade frame the dial, along with diamond-set numerals and a ring of seed pearls. The hand-wound movement, by the European Watch & Clock Co., is tucked into the arch above rather than hidden in a base.

Alain Cartier, a grandson of Louis Cartier, once owned the clock. Phillips says it reputedly belonged to the Maharajah of Nawanagar before that. It comes with a Cartier certificate from 2002, and was last sold at a 1996 Geneva auction.

At that auction, Eric Nussbaum, the first director of the Cartier Collection, called it “the largest, most expressive, and most art deco of the family of six” in a statement.

Aurel Bacs, Phillips’ senior consultant for watches, said Portico No. 4 “is in a league of its own.”

The clock will be on view from Nov. 4 to 7. Estimates exclude buyer’s premium.

Top: Cartier Portico No. 4 clock, estimate CHF 1.8 million–CHF 3.6 million ($2,190,000–$3,900,000)

(Photo courtesy of Phillips)

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