Born in Italy and raised in London, Andrew Grima studied mechanical engineering at what is now Nottingham University. He served as an army engineer during WWII and, upon returning home, entered a secretarial course where he met his first wife, Helène, whose father would inadvertently set Grima on the path to jewelry design.
Grima joined his father-in-law’s jewelry business, H.J. Company Ltd., in 1946 in the accounts department. One day, Grima recalled, “two dealer brothers arrived at our office with a suitcase of large Brazilian stones – aquamarines, citrines, tourmalines and rough amethysts in quantities I had never seen before. I persuaded my father-in-law to buy the entire collection and I set to work designing. This was the beginning of my career.” Though he had no formal training, Grima possessed a love of art and exceptional technical drawing skills which, when combined, allowed him to express his creative ideas in wholly original and modern ways.
Following the death of his father-in-law in 1951, Grima continued on as a designer at the company, experimenting with stones and metalsmithing techniques while quietly building his reputation as an innovative creative force in the jewelry world. He lent some of his designs to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths’ successful Exhibition of Modern Jewellery in 1961, which exposed his work to a broader audience and garnered him significantly more attention. In 1966, he opened his own shop in central London and became a favorite of The Royal Family; over the years, he would design over 100 pieces for them, from diplomatic gifts to personal jewels.
Grima’s jewelry is characterized by large, bold gemstones—often in their raw, uncut form—commonly set into yellow gold. Perhaps most notable was his ability to create consistently diverse and exciting shapes, from spiky and asymmetrical to round and naturalistic, unique to any given material or stone. He won twelve prestigious De Beers Diamond International Awards over the course of his career and opened shops in New York, Sydney, Tokyo and Zurich. After his passing in 2007, his mantle was taken up by his wife and daughter, who continue his tradition of making bespoke jewelry in limited collections of about twenty to thirty pieces per year.
