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Andrew Grima was a British jewellery designer whose work extended into watchmaking in an unconventional way. His Omega About Time collection replaced ordinary watch glass with gemstones, making the material around the dial part of the design. The career-spanning book Andrew Grima: The Father of Modern Jewellery, written by William Grant and published by ACC Art Books in 2020, places that watch project within Grima’s wider body of work.
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Who was Andrew Grima?
Grima was a British jewellery designer, not primarily a watchmaker. His work drew attention in the British jewellery scene, and JCK reports that his Jermyn Street shop opened in 1966. The shop’s opening is a useful marker of his presence in London design; it does not make his career a watchmaking story.
ACC Art Books says Grima won the Queen’s Award for Export, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for Elegant Design, and 11 De Beers Diamonds International Awards. The publisher’s description does not state the years for those awards.
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What is the 2020 book about?
Andrew Grima: The Father of Modern Jewellery is a career-spanning monograph by William Grant, published by ACC Art Books in October 2020. The publisher describes it as the first major monograph on Grima and says it draws on archival sketches, designs and photographs, with Grant having access to the Grima family history and archives.
| Book detail | Specification |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Length | 336 pages |
| Illustrations | 401 color and 52 black-and-white illustrations |
| ISBN | 9781788841061 |
| Publication | October 2020 |
These publication details are listed by ACC Art Books. The Omega watches are a distinctive chapter in the book, rather than its sole subject.
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- Used Book in Good Condition
What was Omega’s About Time collection?
Omega commissioned Grima in 1969 to devise the About Time collection. It was launched at Goldsmiths’ Hall in London in 1970. Its central idea was to put a gemstone where a conventional watch would have glass: the wearer viewed the dial through a stone, so the watch could function as jewellery as well as a timepiece.
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The project emerged from a different design instinct than conventional watchmaking. Revolution Watch recounts that Grima first took experimental wooden models to Switzerland and recalled the reception this way: “The first time I went to Switzerland with the experimental wooden models, I was greeted with dead silence, then a series of polite questions. The Swiss are not inclined to go mad.” The quotation captures the unconventional pitch, but the defining design fact is the gemstone over the dial.
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- By Fabienne Reybaud (Author)
- 324 Pages
- Over 250 Illustrations
- Silk Hardcover
- Imported
Jojo Grima, in Revolution Watch’s account, described his father’s process as a steady stream of sketching: “The way Andrew worked was to incessantly sketch an endless flow of ideas on the back of envelopes, scraps of paper, hotel stationery or bar mats.”
How many About Time pieces were made?
The sources agree that the collection included 55 watches, but differ on the number of matching jewellery pieces. The Omega Museum text reproduced in a visitor PDF gives 30; Revolution Watch gives 31. Those counts should be kept distinct rather than combined into a settled total.
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- Watches: 55, according to both accounts.
- Matching jewellery pieces: 30 in the Omega Museum text reproduced in the visitor PDF; 31 in Revolution Watch’s account.
Did Grima design other watches?
Yes. The historical accounts also note a later gold digital LED collection for Pulsar. The available descriptions here do not establish an exact production count, so it is best understood as a brief later extension of Grima’s watch work, not as a quantified counterpart to About Time.
Where does Grima fit in British jewellery design?
Grima’s story belongs first to jewellery design, with watches offering an especially clear example of how he treated an object as a designed form rather than a mechanism alone. JCK places him in the broader British jewellery-design scene and reports the 1966 Jermyn Street shop opening. For readers interested in that larger career, the monograph is the relevant book; it is not simply a catalogue of the Omega collaboration.
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ACC Art Books presents the book with endorsements from designers and collectors. Marc Jacobs writes: “Since discovering the work of Andrew Grima, I have not only become a collector of his exquisite creations, I have also become one of the many to be inspired by his unique and inimitable designs. Each piece of jewellery, each watch, each object is a sculpture.” James Taffin de Givenchy says: “His work, his style, is completely identifiable, it’s unique.”
See the publisher’s book details for Andrew Grima: The Father of Modern Jewellery.
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