A New Chapter In Jewellery: GRIMA For Hancocks

If Jewels Could Talk with Carol Woolton

Host Carol Woolton interviews Francesca Grima and Amy Burton-Totton about their groundbreaking collaborative series, GRIMA for Hancocks, which merges modernist design with historic craftsmanship. The conversation

Key takeaways

• Andrew Grima revolutionized jewelry by prioritizing designer imagination over precious stone value, earning the Duke of Edinburgh Prize for elegant design in 1966.
• Francesca Grima and Amy Burton-Totton launched a five-piece numbered series called GRIMA for Hancocks, blending contemporary vision with Hancock's historic expertise.

Main topics

• Family legacies in jewelry design
• Andrew Grima's modernist revolution

Notable quotes

"He revolutionized the way people look at jewelry. He is known as the father of modern jewelry."

Conclusion

Listeners gain a nuanced understanding of how second-generation jewelry

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:05) I remember there were many times when I'd fall in love with a stone which I'd convinced my father to buy because I had him wrapped around my little finger. The stone is still in our stone stock because it's the most ridiculous stone that you can't really set. I mean there were... What was it? There was a set of tourmaline spikes. Like how are you going to set tourmaline spikes? And so I keep going back to them because my mother keeps saying, Francesca, when you were 13 you said you really liked these and why are we not... Speaker 3 (0:35) It's ridiculous. And they're still in our stone's talk to this day. Speaker 1 (0:38) I'm Carol Houlton, the voice of jewellery. Welcome to If Jewels Could Talk. I'm an author and broadcaster and the woman who initiated the role of jewellery editor at magazines like Tatler and Vogue. This is a podcast for everyone, for people who do like jewellery, for people who don't realise they like jewellery, and anyone intrigued by fascinating facts, new ideas and forgotten histories. So join me as I tell sparkly tales and meet all sorts of people delving into four centuries of jewellery culture. and investigate what's happening now. Speaker 1 (1:22) Today I'm in a beautiful 18th century Georgian townhouse in St James's Street in London where there is a living record of 175 years of British jewellery history. I'm at Hancock's and although steeped in history we are uncovering today a new contemporary collection created by two young women with very different jewellery inheritances. So I'm with Amy Burton, Creative Director of Hancock's. Amy, thank you for hosting us. Hello, thank you for having us. And Francesca Grima, who's the Creative Director of Grima, the daughter of Andrew Grima, whose radical modernist vision made jewellery modern in the swinging 60s, liberating it from a deference to precious gemstones. Francesca, thank you for being here today. Thank you for inviting me. So there's twinkling gemstones in front of me, the new collection that we're going to talk about in a minute. But to find out first about you two and your past and how you came together and whether or not your jewellery inheritances, how much that's influenced this contemporary collection. So I wanted to understand. your jewellery past. You both come from families where jewellery wasn't simply a profession but more of a way of life. And I want to know what you absorbed growing up without even realising Speaker 2 (2:52) you were learning it. Speaker 1 (2:53) So Francesca, tell us a little about your incredible, groundbreaking father, who I was lucky enough to meet on several occasions and interview. So tell us. Tell us what he did Speaker 3 (3:07) that was so Speaker 1 (3:08) extraordinary. Speaker 3 (3:09) So he revolutionized the way people look at jewelry. He is known as the father of modern jewelry. And he was, I don't know how far back I should be going, but he was born in Rome and moved to England when he was five. Speaker 2 (3:25) Then Speaker 3 (3:25) he went to war in Burma for six years. And he trained as an engineer. And then when he came back, he'd actually already met a lady before going to war who he'd eventually marry. And her uncle owned a jewelry company, H.J. Company, and they had workshops. And so my father went and worked for him as a bookkeeper. One day, a couple of stone dealers. from Brazil came in with this huge suitcase of semi-precious stones, huge suitcase, huge stones. And his father-in-law, we'll call him, had no idea what to do with the stones. And these stone dealers had been turned away by every other jeweler because they said, well, we don't know what to do with them either. And my father at that point said, well, Let me have a try. I might just have a go at designing a collection. And that's how it all started. So Speaker 1 (4:22) these were big aquamarines, trees. And there's things that people weren't using in jewellery. Yes, yes. So he kind of got into it by accident. Speaker 3 (4:30) He didn't Speaker 1 (4:30) intend to be a jeweller. No, he Speaker 3 (4:32) didn't intend to be a jeweller. And you can see that through his designs. You can see that there's so much engineering involved. He never made a piece of jewellery. He always would present the goldsmith with a design. Lord Smith would say, Mr. Grima, that's impossible to make. And he'd say, well, that's not my problem. And hand it over. And hand it over, exactly. So then from there, I mean, he was incredibly charming and a very good salesman as well. So that helped. But in 1963, Lord Snowden made a speech at the British Jewellers Association. And he said that... British jewellery was unadventurous. He was actually Speaker 1 (5:13) quite rude to them, wasn't he? Yes. To all the jewellery association. He sort of said, it's boring. Yes. What Speaker 3 (5:19) are you doing? Exactly. And I wonder why they even invited him in the first place. They obviously didn't know that he was going to say that. And the Daily Mail reported this. And it's strange because I'm sure my father did not read the Daily Mail. But anyway, they reported this. And my father wrote Lord Snowden the letter and said, I beg to differ. And I'd like to invite you to come to my workshop and see what I'm doing. And this was the usual way my father, throughout his life, that's what he would, you know, he was a real go-getter. And so Lord Snowden accepted and went to his workshop and was absolutely amazed by the things that my father was doing. So then from then, his... ties with the, well, he had a connection with the royal family, of course, and he was the only jeweller to win the Duke of Edinburgh Prize for elegant design in 1966. This was an award that was usually given to industrial designers such as Dyson, and then Princess Margaret, Princess Anne, the Queen. So Prince Philip gave the Queen a carved ruby brooch. that was part of the winning collection for the Duke of Edinburgh Prize. And as it was such a personal gift, it became very sentimental to her, and hence her wearing it so often. Speaker 1 (6:34) And she wore it up until her death. She was Speaker 3 (6:37) spotted Speaker 1 (6:37) wearing Speaker 3 (6:37) it, wasn't she? Yes, Speaker 1 (6:38) and at Speaker 3 (6:38) Prince, if I'm not mistaken, at Prince Philip's funeral. So it was very close to her heart. Yes. Speaker 1 (6:44) So this was a whole new vision of really equating... jewellery more with sculpture and really making it align to the imagination of the designer. not reliant on the value of the precious stone. Yes. Incredibly contemporary and contemporary looking. And then Amy, you were brought up steeped in antique jewellery. Absolutely. So antique, vintage, Speaker 2 (7:07) and today we do create a lot of jewellery ourselves. So our move, we were on, well, Hancock's had a few homes over its 176 years. Within sort of a stone's throw of each other, it's had a few homes. Originally, back in the day, Hancock's made jewellery. Charles Hancock, he'd been in the industry for a bit, so he started Hancock's, or C.F. Hancock's. We've had a historian, since we moved to St James's two years ago, and actually just shortly before that, we've had a historian digging into more and more of Hancock's history. Because over the various moves over the years, parts of the archives and histories has been lost. He was quite a character. There's like a little newspaper article about his world tour, European tour, where he goes around seeing all the heads of state and the royal families, like European royal families. And there's a huge list of sort of the warrants that he had almost immediately once he started business. As I said, he was already established. So what, from Speaker 1 (8:09) Queen Victoria? Speaker 2 (8:10) Queen Victoria, yeah, absolutely. But also European. And there's quite a few. I mean, there's a huge list I could... find but it might take a while to read them. But yeah, Queen Victoria, importantly, was the first one and then she also did entrust Hancock's with the making of the Victoria Cross, which is an honour that we still hold today and it's the only company that's ever made the Victoria Cross, so that's very important and dear to our hearts. The Victoria Cross is the highest honour that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth Armed Forces. It's for gallantry in active service. It was instituted by Queen Victoria Speaker 3 (8:47) in 1856. Speaker 2 (8:49) Hugely important medal with an incredibly important history and something that we value very, very highly and take extremely seriously. We couldn't hold it more dearly to our hearts, really. Speaker 1 (9:00) So Speaker 2 (9:01) it's carried on through the family into to reach your father. It was a family business for a long time. When my father came along into the story of Hancocks. Hancocks was no longer being held by anyone from the Hancocks family. It was board of directors. And my father was when they were on the Burlington Gardens on the corner. And my father actually had the shops next door, which then he was young and Stevens. And he was approached by them and he ended up taking over Hancocks. My father's story is quite different in that. He started down the markets. So he was down Portobello, Bourbon Sea. Buying and selling. Buying and selling, yeah. Best place to learn. Absolutely. He learned everything by handling it. It wasn't such a thing then that, you know, go and do your gemology and things like that. He was very much, they went down all the markets. Actually, he met my mom as well. And they would... They would do all the markets in London on the weekends and they would actually drive up to Scotland. And then they would work their way back down the country during the week, selling what they bought in the London markets and then just start again. And that was their cycle. That was their life. They then sort of progressed a few other spots before they ended up next door to Hancock's. But that was his first full retail store under his own name. So he was Young Stephen first. There was another Stephen in the trade at the time. And my dad became known as Young Stephen. And the other guy was known as Old Stephen, I guess. I don't know. I never met him. But yeah, so Young Stephen. And then it became Young and Stephens when he opened the retail store because his mother's maiden name was Stephens. So very different sort of journey. into it but also completely fascinating. I mean I grew up as a very little girl being taken down to Portobello Market on Saturday mornings. In those days you know he'd be getting down there sort of like five in the morning, six in the morning obviously when I was little it's probably a little bit later than that. But yeah I've got lots of memories of being down there as a little girl. Did you go on the selling trips to Scotland and down to the country? Once we were like we me and my brother were born they stopped traveling like that so Young and Stevens was opened the year I was born, 1981. You only know that date straight away off the top of my head because apparently it was very scandalous that my mum was seen painting the walls inside before they opened, heavily pregnant, which was, I