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At Bonhams, Andrew Grima Works Bring a White-Glove Sale
A total of 55 pieces by the avant-garde designer popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s garnered a total of $1.1 million.
Andrew Grima designed this 18-karat gold, amethyst, emerald and diamond ring in 1995. A private collection composed of 55 pieces of the late designer’s work sold in its entirety at Bonhams London on Wednesday.
London--This week, Bonhams offered what it said was the largest private collection of Andrew Grima-designed jewelry ever to appear at auction, and it sold every last piece.
The collection totaled 55 pieces, a mix that included watches, necklaces, rings and earrings, and garnered £817,750, or about $1.1 million
The top-performing lot of the sale was a boulder opal pendant/necklace that Grima designed in 1972 to look like a mountain landscape, with gold ridges and brilliant-cut diamond “snow” (pictured below).
Estimated to go for a maximum of £30,000, the piece doubled that, selling for £60,000, or about $81,480.
Another Grima necklace (pictured above), an 18-karat gold citrine and diamond piece from 1974, sold for £50,000 (about $68,000) against a pre-sale estimate of £15,000-20,000.
The two Grima rings in the collection also went for more than anticipated.
The highest-grossing of the two was an 18-karat gold ring set with a cushion-cut amethyst surrounded by squares of emeralds and diamonds (above).
Designed by Grima in 1995, the ring sold for £16,250 (about $22,100), besting its highest pre-sale estimate of £4,000-6,000.
Grima’s “Greenland” watch bangle from “About Time,” the watch collection he made with Omega in 1970, went for £35,000, or about $47,524.
The jewelry-watch combination piece (pictured above) was No. 15 in the collection and features an irregularly shaped piece of transparent pink tourmaline as its face. Bonhams said that the timepiece was called the Greenland because it was cut in the shape of a “stylized iceberg.”
A pair of gold and amethyst Grima earrings from the “Rock Revival” collection (circa 1971, pictured above), sold for £30,000, or about $40,700 against a pre-sale estimate of £6,000-8,000.
Regarded as one of the most imaginative designers of the 20th century, the most sought-after pieces from Grima are those he created in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Some of his more famous clients included the queen of England, Princess Margaret, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Ursula Andress, who was the first “Bond girl” (she played Honey Ryder in “Dr. No.”)
Today, fashion designers like Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs are known to collect pieces by Grima, though Bonhams said it could not disclose the identity of anyone who bought pieces in the sale.
Grima died in late 2007 at the age of 86. Joanne Maughan-Brown, Grima’s second wife who is also the great-granddaughter of Sir Thomas Cullinan, the diamond magnate whose name is attached to the largest rough diamond
ever found, still operates the family business from London alongside the couple’s daughter, Francesca.
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