From Blue Diamonds to Barbie Shoes: The Top Jewellery News This Week
September is ending on an eclectic note, with this week’s jewellery news moving from an important blue diamond coming to auction in London to a collaboration decades in the making and some provocative ideas about what makes a material precious. Familiar motifs are being looked at again, too, alongside a move into more precious territory for one British jewellery brand.
These highlights are just a snapshot of the news we share inside the Katerina Perez Club. New collections, launches, exhibitions and industry appointments are added throughout the week, alongside original features from our editors, each bringing their own interests and expertise. It is a place to follow jewellery as it happens and read beyond the headlines.
GRIMA for Hancocks: The British Collaboration We Didn’t See Coming
GRIMA for Hancocks arrives with more history behind it than most collaborations. Francesca Grima, Creative Director of GRIMA, the jewellery house founded by her late father Andrew Grima, and Hancocks London Creative Director Amy Burton-Totton are close friends, and their families have known one another for decades.
Andrew was one of the great figures of post-war British jewellery, transforming its design language with the audacious, sculptural jewels that made GRIMA a favourite of royalty, artists and the international jet set in the 1960s and ’70s. Francesca’s parents later moved to Switzerland but returned to London each summer to exhibit at Hancocks, cementing the relationship between the two families.
Three years ago, Amy saw a series of gouache designs Francesca had made for herself and asked whether they could turn them into jewellery. The five resulting pieces reflect GRIMA’s taste for the unexpected, while the stones draw directly on Hancocks’ particular strengths.
At the heart of the collection is the friendship between Francesca Grima and Amy Burton, built on a connection between their families that goes back decades.
The setting of a 5.07 carat antique pear-shaped diamond ring takes its inspiration from Trellick Tower, the landmark Brutalist tower block in west London, seen at night. French cut diamonds scattered around the shank recreate the effect of its windows illuminated after dark. The convertible diamond earrings were inspired by an Oscar Niemeyer building in Paris, where metal ceiling plates catch and fracture the light. Francesca translated this into French cut diamonds, arranged to create depth and reflection rather than an even surface.
The collection combines GRIMA’s distinctive design language with Hancocks London’s exceptional stones and shared commitment to British craftsmanship.
The collaboration began with Francesca’s gouache designs and developed over three years into a series of one of a kind jewels.
French cut diamond earrings inspired by Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture can be worn as shorter day earrings or with their full evening drops.
Bold, architectural and highly distinctive, the dress set pairs French cut diamonds with brushed 18ct yellow gold in a design rooted in GRIMA’s modernist style.
The dress set takes its cue from cowboy collar clips, with each element designed to be worn together, separately or shared.
An 11.15 carat cognac old cut diamond sits at the centre of a ring designed without conventional claws and surrounded by French cut diamonds.
Dual GRIMA and Hancocks makers’ marks appear on every piece, marking a collaboration built on craftsmanship, friendship and shared history.
The dress set can be traced back to a Western Francesca was watching, in which the collar clips worn by the cowboys provided an unlikely source of inspiration. The idea developed into a double clip that can also be worn as a single brooch, accompanied by cufflinks and dress buttons. The pieces can be worn together, separately or even divided between two people.
One final detail brings the family histories together beautifully. The entire series was made by a single craftsman whose father once worked with Andrew Grima, and every piece carries both GRIMA and Hancocks makers’ marks.
Colombian emeralds and Asscher cut diamonds come together in a bold architectural design that reimagines how the stones are worn.
Elmwood’s: An 8.03 Carat Blue Diamond Comes to London
On 1 October, Elmwood’s in Notting Hill will offer an 8.03 carat natural Fancy Light Blue diamond in its London Fine Jewellery sale, estimated at £1.5 million to £2 million. It is only the third blue diamond weighing more than eight carats ever to be offered at auction in the UK, and the largest pear-shaped example to come to a British saleroom.
A rare 8.03 carat natural Fancy Light Blue diamond ring, estimated at £1.5 million to £2 million.
Only two blue diamonds weighing more than eight carats have previously been offered at auction in the UK.
The diamond has VS2 clarity, even colour distribution and no fluorescence, according to its GIA report. Its elongated pear shape is framed by concentric borders of pink and white diamonds, with further white diamonds extending along the shoulders of the ring. Until now, it has been in the collection of a Scottish owner.
Its two predecessors are the 70.21 carat Idol’s Eye, offered at Christie’s in London in 1865, and the Wittelsbach Diamond, which appeared at Sotheby’s in 2008. More than a century separates those two auctions, and almost two decades have passed since the last. On 1 October, this 8.03 carat blue diamond joins that very short list.
The rare blue diamond comes from a private collector in Scotland and is expected to attract international interest when it goes under the hammer in London.
Loquet: Diamonds Move In
Known for its transparent lockets filled with tiny, personalised charms, British jewellery brand Loquet has launched a new diamond collection and, with it, made a significant change to the materials it will use going forward. The brand is moving away from 9K and 14K gold and will now work exclusively in solid 18K gold, beginning with two diamond-set lockets and a group of all-diamond charms.
Loquet introduces a new diamond collection inspired by founder Sheherazade Goldsmith’s long standing love of the stone.
The collection also includes a series of all diamond charms crafted in 18k yellow gold and designed to be collected over time.
Each diamond is a natural F colour stone, individually selected for its brightness and clear, luminous appearance.
Heart and princess cut diamonds appear across the new charms, adding new forms to Loquet’s personal approach to jewellery.
As part of the brand’s next chapter, Loquet is moving exclusively to solid 18k gold across its creations.
Loquet’s new diamond lockets preserve the house’s central idea: jewellery as a personal archive, built through charms that can be collected, layered and reinterpreted over time.
Designed to be collected and combined over time, the new charms continue Loquet’s approach to jewellery as a personal expression of the wearer’s own story.
The new lockets are set edge to edge with diamonds, taking the familiar Loquet silhouette into noticeably more precious territory. The charms include heart and princess cut stones, while every diamond in the collection is natural F colour and individually selected for brightness and clarity. It is a more precious take on Loquet’s familiar formula, without losing the personal element that has always defined the brand.
Designed for everyday wear, the lockets can be styled alone or layered with other pieces to make them feel entirely personal.
Mikimoto: A New Twist on the Bow
The bow is one of jewellery’s oldest decorative motifs, but lately it seems to be everywhere again. Last week we looked at Jessica McCormack’s new Bow collection; now Mikimoto has introduced new additions to its own Bow Charm collection.
Naturally, Mikimoto pairs its bows with pearls. Photographed on Japanese actress Keiko Kitagawa, the new designs include an opera-length necklace and matching earrings, combining Akoya cultured pearls with diamond-set ribbons.
Mikimoto expands its Bow Charm collection with playful new designs combining luminous Akoya cultured pearls, diamonds and 18K white gold.
Diamond set ribbon motifs bring a whimsical touch to the collection, pairing Mikimoto’s signature pearls with a more playful sense of femininity.
More playful than the original Bow Charm designs, the necklace can be worn long or doubled around the neck, with small diamond bows placed at intervals along the strand and diamond-set rondelles adding flashes of light between the pearls. The matching earrings pair a pavé diamond bow with a single Akoya pearl suspended beneath it.
Actress Keiko Kitagawa stars in the latest Bow Charm campaign, wearing the new necklace and earrings with the collection’s signature elegance.
Jewelry on the Wild Side: Preciousness Beyond Gemstones
Yak teeth, Barbie shoes, eel skin, ostrich eggshells and flip-flops washed up on African coastlines are not materials you would normally expect to find in a jewellery book. They are among the many surprises in Jewelry on the Wild Side, a new, colour-filled book by South African-born artist, designer and collector Elena Agostinis, published by ORO Editions.
Agostinis came to jewellery from outside the industry. Born in Cape Town, she studied graphic design before moving to the United States, where she worked at Condé Nast and went on to pursue a career spanning art, interiors and collecting. Travelling introduced her to very different traditions of adornment and, in particular, the ingenuity of people creating jewellery from the materials around them.
Jewelry on the Wild Side by Elena Agostinis looks at jewellery made beyond the usual boundaries of fine jewellery.
Across some 300 pages and 200 colour illustrations, she brings together artists and artisans who turn the ordinary, discarded and naturally occurring into wearable art. It is the second book in her Wild Side series and, this time, jewellery provides the route into a much bigger question: does something need to be intrinsically valuable to become precious?
The book features pieces made from unexpected materials, including natural and found objects.
Elena Agostinis draws on years of travel and collecting to show how jewellery can reflect culture, place and personal style.
Across 300 pages, the book brings together bold jewellery by artists and makers from around the world.
Materials such as rice paper, ostrich eggshell, teeth and discarded objects appear throughout the book, showing a very different side of jewellery design.
Until Next Week
September has kept us busy right to the end, with plenty happening across the jewellery world. We’ll be back next week to see what October has in store.
WORDS
Bianca Blanari approaches jewellery as architecture in miniature, where form, structure, balance and elevation are distilled into objects of intimate scale. Bianca joined Katerina Perez as Club Editor and contributing writer in March.
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