On November 15, Andrew Grima, the Jermyn Street, London, jewellers, paid £335.196 ($804,470.40) at Christie's in Geneva, on behalf of a British client, for a pear-shaped diamond weighing 55.91 carats. Only a handful of diamonds can command this kind of price. The last record-breaking sale was of Elizabeth Taylor's celebrated stone, which fetched £437,500 ($1,050,000) at Parke-Bernet, New York. Hers weighed 69.42 carats. The Gemmological Institute of America certified that the stone sold in November is 'literally flawless', and that it has 'a rare light blue colour'.
Source: The Connoisseur - February 1973
Trev.
Andrew Grima
Re: Andrew Grima
Pearls and Opals
It’s just six months since Andrew Grima, perhaps the most distinguished of Britain’s many modern jewelry designers, took his collection of 86 lovely prototype watches to EXPO ’70 in Japan. Now he is off again, this time to New York, He has created 82 wonderful pieces of jewelry featuring pearls and opals. This collection took a year to build - which incidentally meant that Grima tied up £125,000 for that time. It was spent on beautiful opals from Australia which he visited before EXPO °70, and on baroque pearls he found in Rangoon on the way back. The opals range from black through blue to translucent and irridescent white, and the pearls from black through deep gold to white: Naturally, prices are not low. A choker necklet of pearls set in molten gold cups, for instance, costs £6,600.
Source: The Japan Times - 12th December 1970
Trev.
It’s just six months since Andrew Grima, perhaps the most distinguished of Britain’s many modern jewelry designers, took his collection of 86 lovely prototype watches to EXPO ’70 in Japan. Now he is off again, this time to New York, He has created 82 wonderful pieces of jewelry featuring pearls and opals. This collection took a year to build - which incidentally meant that Grima tied up £125,000 for that time. It was spent on beautiful opals from Australia which he visited before EXPO °70, and on baroque pearls he found in Rangoon on the way back. The opals range from black through blue to translucent and irridescent white, and the pearls from black through deep gold to white: Naturally, prices are not low. A choker necklet of pearls set in molten gold cups, for instance, costs £6,600.
Source: The Japan Times - 12th December 1970
Trev.
Re: Andrew Grima
At the Goldsmiths Hall in the City of London, Ursula Andress, the Swiss-born model, wears part of a range of jewellery which won 44-year-old Andrew Grima this year's Duke of Edinburgh prize for elegant design. The lei necklace is a collar of 18 carat gold edged with 90 round diamonds of varying sizes. It is made up of random lengths of thin round gold wire engraved to produce a silk-like texture, finished off at each end by a globule of highly polished gold. With a selling price of around $7,200 it was the most expensive piece in the range. The drop ear clips are of 18 carat yellow gold and platinum with two large black opals, square emeralds and sapphires and white diamonds. For the ring, a piece of bark peeled from a tree was cast in 18 carat gold and soldered to a shank and the permimeter set with 35 brilliant cut diamonds of varying sizes.
Source: The Lindsay Daily Post - 8th June 1966
Trev.
Source: The Lindsay Daily Post - 8th June 1966
Trev.