The present example, Reference 2965, in 18-karat yellow gold with ruby-set bezel and bracelet, represents the Santos at its most opulent, the octagonal form that in its steel expression is the definitive tool-watch transformed here by the most precious materials and the most exacting jewellery techniques into an object of extraordinary luxury. The bezel, set with a continuous border of brilliant-cut rubies of fine colour and calibrated dimension, reinterprets the industrial vocabulary of the exposed screws and geometric case architecture through the lens of haute joaillerie, producing an object that is simultaneously true to the Santos tradition and entirely remote from it. The integrated bracelet, itself ruby-set in correspondence with the bezel, extends this decorative programme across the full length of the watch as worn, creating a continuity of material and ornament that only the most technically accomplished ateliers of the Place Vendome era could reliably achieve.

The white dial with date, signed Cartier in the manner of the period, provides the necessary point of chromatic repose within a composition of considerable visual intensity, its clean surface and restrained typography serving to anchor the watch in its function as a timepiece rather than permitting it to dissolve entirely into the category of jewellery. Case serial number 296502365 dates this example to the principal production period of the reference, and the condition described as new old stock is of the utmost significance in the context of a watch of this material complexity: the preservation of the ruby settings, the bracelet articulation and the case surfaces in a state consistent with minimal or no wear from new is a circumstance of exceptional rarity for a jewellery watch of this period and ambition, the majority of comparable examples having been worn and consequently showing the inevitable evidence of use across their most delicate components. The present example, by contrast, enters the market in a state of preservation that renders it as close to its original condition as it is possible for a watch of this age to be, and that places it in the very highest tier of collectible Cartier jewellery watches produced during the most creative decade in the manufacture's modern history.