The innovative imagination of the sixties revived with Maison Andrew Grima.
It’s nice when the myths continue. La Maison Andrew Grima, jeweler that marked the sixties, and died in 2007, he continues its journey through the work of his wife Jojo and the daughter Francesca. Andrew Grima has an original story. He was born in Rome to Italian parents (with a kinship with the family Farnese). He grew up in London, where he attended St Joseph College, Beulah Hill, but he studied mechanical engineering.
Andrew Grima was the trendiest jewelry designer in London’s West End in the 1960s and 1970s. He sold the jewelry in his gallery at 80 Jermyn Street, Mayfair, furnished with the world’s first perspex spiral staircase, built by Peter Rice and Ove Arup. In 1970 Grima also designed a collection of watches, About Time, for Omega. And in 1976 a collection of golden Led digital watches for Pulsar. The British designer has won numerous awards for his contribution to the jewelry industry. For example, he was the only jeweler to win the Duke of Edinburgh Award for design and he won 13 De Beers Diamonds International Awards, more than any other jeweler.
His father was a designer of fabrics and the Andrew brothers became architects. His jeweler work was much appreciated by the British royal family: among others, for a brooch with rubies purchased by Queen Elizabeth II and another gold for the Princess Margaret. Among her fans there are also designers like Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs. Fortunately Francesca Grima has inherited from her father a good dose of creativity, while the mother Jojo has worked extensively with her husband, so much to learn the style and manufacturing techniques. In a nutshell: a man has disappeared, but it lives what he has created. After two decades in Switzerland mother and daughter returned to London and continue in the unmistakable style of the Maison, which includes abstract forms and unusual combinations of materials, stones and geometric shapes often irregular. Each year are introduced only 20-30 new pieces.
